Gods of Arling Tor
The universe of Arling Tor is home to a 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 beyond these realms.
On Cerris, people often refer to the pantheon as a whole as the Twelve or the Nine, depending on whether or not they're including the 'evil' gods in what they wish to invoke. Of the Twelve, all are Originals (of the 'Original Family' born of the creation of the universe) aside from Kyrule (born a mortal elf) and Vitoi (wandered in from another universe and just kind of made himself at home). Sonmi is also arguably not one of the Originals; despite being born of the same family, she was later replaced by the White Reaper, at the time an aspect of Kyrule. Because she maintained the name and position of the Original Sonmi when doing so, this detail is not widely known.[1]
The Twelve
| God | Alignment | Other names/aspects | Domains |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alyre | CG | Lara, Alynn, Bacquoi, The Lady of Cats | love, passion, dance, beauty, temptation, cats, beginnings |
| Azorres | LG | The Light, Eiko, Adries | light, life, peace, redemption, martyrs, respite, perseverance, air |
| Brenn | NG | Brenna, Voi | culture, propriety, nobles, art, profit, intrigue, thieves, tea |
| Djieka | CN | Cheekah, Dis | chaos, disorder, monotony, unreasonable expectation, chronic paranoia, luck |
| Kyrule | LN | Kheris, Irin, Deathdealer, Keeper of Names | death[2], spirits[2], judgement[2], equilibrium, finality, time, dreams[3], nightmares[3], lies[3], masks[3] |
| Lyria | N | Lepaedi | nature, cycles, growth, decomposition, forests, fertility, fountains |
| Neiryo | CN | Nausica, Kikein, Nessis, Augh, Raven, The Maelstrom, Lord of the Depths | water, oceans, pressure, storms, ancestors, wisdom, riddles, cleverness, discovery |
| Orin | LG | Lord of War | war, battle, valour, might, justice[4], crusaders[4], righteous indignation[4], fire |
| Roshar | NG | Belotzi, Stone God | earth, durability, stone, strength, solidity |
| Sonmi | CE | Ghauran, Gurasis, Tymor, Zachri, White Reaper | destruction, tyranny, violence, cruelty, fury, hate, fear, revenge, madness[3], insanity |
| Veshura | LE | Zeahne, Mishra, Öjra, The Void, The Ungodly Light | power, knowledge, magic, ambition, debts, undeath, eternities, darkness, weariness, absence |
| Vitoi | NE | Hazz'ridan, The Loss | ultimate failure, frustration, dead ends, unfinished business, procrastination, paradoxes |
Alignments reflect common perceived alignments among the general populace but aren't necessarily accurate to the nature of the gods themselves. None of the gods are particularly evil in practice:
- Despite her masks, Sonmi tends to be most commonly aligned with Azorres and Kyrule.
- While Veshura and Vitoi generally present as not overtly caring one way or the other about most such things, they tend to frown on people being pointless dicks as well.
Orin, on the other hand, can be a bit of a dick himself and might be the most truly evil of the lot, often forcing Kyrule to take matters into his own hands to ensure true justice occurs, despite that supposedly being rather outside his domain.
Aspects and other gods
The Twelve are served by and/or may also present themselves as various aspects and avatars. 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.
Other gods, such as Daru, the All-Father to the Original Family, may exist[5] outside of this, but do not feature in any mortal religion due to having no direct dealings with 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'.
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. Kyrule did, however, make one apparently accidental exception to his general policy of non-interference by creating the Chicken God, a distributed god-form entity that mostly exists memetically within social media, that, due to an excess of undirected belief[6], may quite possibly be the most powerful divine being in all of Arling Tor.
Notes and references
- ↑ Seriously nobody knows this outside the gods themselves. And even they don't seem to want to acknowledge it most of the time.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 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.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Was Eapherod's domain, but Kyrule killed her.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Was Lashaliss Azall's domain, but Eapherod killed her.
- ↑ He totally exists, and is a total dick.
- ↑ 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.
