Gods and Goddesses

=Gods and Goddesses=

The gods, like the gods in most pantheons, have their strengths and their weaknesses, their prejudices and their feuds–they’re just enacted on a much larger scale. Gods have each their own followers and believers and just because you follow one doesn’t mean you visit other temples as well. Mithros worshipers don’t invariably worship the other gods, though they may at least pay lip service to the Goddess (or rather, it’s respect for another religion with a strong following), any more than Goddess worshipers worship the Hag or the Horse Lords or Mithros. The one universal god is the Black God of death.

The K’mir worship the Horse Lords and their parents, and Pierce has yet to explain the local gods in the Yamani Islands, Maren, Saraine, Tyra, Tusaine, and Scanra. The Banjiku of Carthak don’t worship any of the Great Gods at all, and they definitely don’t like the Graveyard Hag! Kyprioth is the former patron god of the Isles, but the raka, or natives, worship Gunapi the Sunrose, a warrior goddess who also rules over volcanoes and isn’t an aspect of the Goddess.

People for the most part respect other ways and other gods. Rarely do religions exist in this world that actively disagree with the rest of the Gods.

The gods of the Divine Realms are about order, about the great cycle of life: birth, growth, creation, deterioration, death, and the next cycle begins. Uusoae is your kid sister who crawled over to the Lego castle you just made and with a gleeful “whee!” throws the whole thing up in the air to see the pieces fly. The truth is we need both, and we need to find a balance in them. Too much order and everything goes stagnant and begins to rot. Too much chaos, and nothing gets done. That’s what the Divine Realms and Chaos symbolize, the precarious balance, and what happens when one side gets too powerful. Or, if you were raised a good Freudian, like me, then id is the selfish grabby part that leaves destruction in its wake; the superego or conscience supplies you with rules for perfection that you feel inadequate for failing to achieve, and the ego is the part of you that lives in the real world and balances between the two.

Gods often get involved in mortal wars, as it's a part of the game to them. In example, Mithros and the Goddess became involved in the conquest of the Copper Isles not only because their followers did, but because it was a chance for them to screw over their younger brother, Kyprioth, and get the upper hand on him.

The strength of any given god comes from the strength of their worshipers. That being said, the gods can only influence the behaviors of their worshipers so much. There is the crossroads in time, when humans must decide what will influence the power in the Divine Realms.

If a god tires, s/he lets one of her/his offspring take over and s/he journeys into the Black God’s realms or the mortal world, where they eventually die after a very long life and then travel to the Peaceful Realms in any case.

The mortal realms are a reflection of the divine realms, and thus change is allowed in both realms though the change in the mortal realms takes a different form as that of the divine realms. Change is more structured in the Divine Realms due to them being about order. Uusoae’s realms are about change for the sake of change, which is why order and chaos have to balance–both are needed for life, but having one more powerful than the other makes life meaningless.

Gods aren’t very discriminating in their wrath. They’re clubs, not lasers. In the case of the Graveyard Hag's attack against Carthak, Daine smashing it was equivalent the gods saying to the entire empire, “There are powers greater than you, and this is a sampling of what they will put on you if you don’t start behaving yourselves.”

You can kill a human-like god, since wars and murder are part of what makes us human, but the result would be cataclysmic, on an order no one likes to contemplate. If Chaos won, remember, it would be the end, the overwhelming, of everything humanity and the gods found necessary. Even when Kyprioth took his major defeat, he was simply exiled to the ends of the universe, not killed, and his consort the Jaguar Goddess is chained, not dead. Defeat, yes. Kill, no. Unless you want to kiss the mortal realms bye-bye, in the case of a Great God. If you kill a lesser god, like Weiryn, prepare to see the lands in which he’s worshipped be destroyed–in which case you’ve got all the other gods with responsibilities there looking for you. =The Realms of the Universe= =The First Powers= Parents to the great gods.
 * 1) the Divine Realms: home of the gods, immortals, and the Dragonlands
 * 2) the Living Realms: mortal earth
 * 3) the Peaceful Realm: kingdom of the dead
 * 4) the Chaos Realm: chaos. pure and simple.
 * 1) Father Universe: created the realms
 * 2) Mother Flame: created light, stars, death

The Three Sorrows
Housed in Divine Realms but not gods in themselves, rather forces brought into the Mortal Realms by human excess.


 * - Malady


 * - Starvation


 * - Slaughter

The Great Gods

 * 1) The Great Mother Goddess
 * 2) Mithros
 * 3) The Black God
 * 4) Hakkoi the Smith's God
 * 5) Gainel the Dream King
 * 6) Kyprioth the Trickster

The Carthaki Gods

 * 1) Mynoss
 * 2) Shakith
 * 3) The Graveyard Hag
 * 4) Jihuk

The Banjiku gods

 * 1) Lushagui
 * 2) Kidunka

Gods of the K'mir

 * 1) Grandmother Stone
 * 2) Father Storm and Mother Fire: parents of

The Four Horselords

 * 1) Bian North-wind
 * 2) Chavi West-wind
 * 3) Vau East-wind
 * 4) Shai South-Wind

The Yamani Gods

 * 1) Yama
 * 2) Wave-walker
 * 3) Sakuyo

Lesser Gods of Galla/Scanra/northeastern Tortall
The Green Lady
 * 1) Weiryn
 * 2) Yahzed

Raka Gods

 * 1) Gunapi the Sunrose

Chaos

 * 1) Uusoae

Additional Gods

 * 1) Lailan
 * 2) Mila
 * 3) The Green Man