The Pantheon
The Heavenly Realms. There’s no place to go but up, they say, and the Pantheon is the top of eternity. Making it here requires a good heart, a strong soul, and a pure touch. It’s not easy, but is eternal peace supposed to be?
The Pantheon is divided into two parts: The Gods of the Natural, and the Essences of Souls.
The world couldn’t function without both; nature is where men live, and the essences are how men live. The two co-exist as one and mankind both serves and is served by each.
Isamiael, Demi-Goddess of Health and Medicine, the Traveler
Worshipped by: The Order of the Hand
Home Plane: The Mount/The Sands
The Lady of Medicine draws Her power from Kora’thi and Pristi both, but none of the Gods are quite sure where She came from or Who gave Her life. Some believe that She is the daughter of Pristi; others believe She may be from Niasmis. A rumor exists that She may be a mortal ascendant – although how that could have possibly been is a secret known only to one (if it is indeed true). She is the patron deity of Templars, Clerics, Medics, and even the random soldier who needs a little extra help to stop errant bleeding. Isamiael has no home of Her own. Instead, She and the souls graced to live alongside Her travel from ream to realm, from as far as the edge of the Sands beyond Pristi’s gate to the top of the Mount itself, delivering comfort and easing the confusion of souls freshly delivered from the last world.
Niasmis, the Goddess of Love; the Lover, the Matron, the Mother; the Harlot
Worshiped by: The Order of Love
Home Plane: The Eternal Palace and the Grand Sanctuary
Banished from Her rightful place next to the top of the Mount of Heaven by the other Gods and Goddess for an infraction against the Goddess of Flame that She truthfully is not guilty of, the Goddess of Love is considered by nearly everyone to be the least of the Divine, and as such, holds power only in the lowest regions of the Heavens, and… well… …She has a bit of a chip on Her shoulder because of it…
After the Hardening of Hearts, Niasmis felt that to keep Her people from being persecuted to extinction, they would need to have some service to offer the mortal world that would set them aside from all others. Furious for how She was painted in the Fall of Agromah, She swore to Herself that such a thing would never come to pass again. She sought aid from all corners of eternity before finding assistance from one of Her counterparts in the pit; a deal was struck between Herself and Avaritisha for extensive knowledge of the Abyss – and how to condemn those that strayed from it. This lead to the creation of the First Exorcist and the Order of Love suddenly no longer existed as pacifists, but rather, warriors dedicated to protecting those they held dear.
Unlike the other Gods, Niasmis relies on Her Archangels to help enforce Her influence across the mortal world. Given how Her followers are persecuted, Her people need an extra guiding hand at times. Even still, the Archangel Li’Orla has been missing from her place in the Eternal Palace. She isn’t dead – but she is missing, and completely hidden from the sight of the Goddess of Love.
Niasmis is the Mother of Nature, and Grandmother of Elements. Her love gave Life to the world so that mankind would have a place to grow. Her own children forsake Her when the Hardening came to pass, nearly universally siding with the Goddess of Flame over Love. Corsi and Lumina stayed at Her side, while Melia maintains an alliance solely to piss off Her sister (and it works).
Unlike most of the Heavens, the Goddess of Love has earned true enemies in the Abyss. Wile the Fallen freely gaze upon the Pantheon with feelings of hatred or anger, the last two centuries of condemnation have turned the hearts of the lower Gods to frothing anger against Her and Her interests. As the mother of Nature, She is reviled by the God of Decay, and loathed by Her opposite, Covorn.
The Daemon Lord Arch-Duke Belizal holds a special place in Her heart, and woe be unto him when it is time for Her will to be enacted against his holdings…
The Three Archangels of Love
Miral – the Guardian
Miral is the the protector, the guardian, the One Who Defends. It is said that in the middle of the Hardening, Miral was tasked to save as many of Her followers as he could as they trekked through the mountains and jungles south of Civa and over the turbulent seas from Places South. It is rumored that He bedded Mother Adrianne when she established the Grand Temple on the shores of Dawnfire, and bestowed upon her the strength to see a long line of paladins with a deeper touch of the Divine than most.
Samia – the Passionate
Samia has the difficult task of spreading the Word of Love to the masses throughout the land, and to soften hearts turned to stone by the Hardening. She works tirelessly to give voice to preachers, to give warmth to lovers, to inspire Love in poetry and art. It is because of her efforts that a resurgence of the Order of Love has taken hold in some parts of the world.
Li’Orla – the Grand Messenger
The firstborn angel in service to Niasmis, she was last seen at the Fall of Agromah, and her current whereabouts are unknown (even by the Goddess of Love). Or at least, that’s what they say. Rumor has it that a man in a blood-red robe knows a lot more than that…
(The) Origin, the Faceless
Worshipped by: None
Home Plane: The Beginning
The Origin is the God that no other God has ever seen. He or She simply exists. The Creator of All Gods hovers far above the Mount and has sway over everything and nothing. Some say that the Origin is asleep, others that It is always awake and watching. The Origin has not spoken directly to the Pantheon since the creation of all creation – and gave a simple word when It did.
“Live.”
The Origin is honored by many, but worshipped by none. For some reason, the idea of attempting to serve It never lasts more than a heartbeat in the minds of any creature; mortal or otherwise. The only other fact known of the Origin is that the River Solindal flows from It, and that new souls rain from the glowing light far above the Ascent and to the mortal world.
Pristi, the Goddess of Light and Purity, the Crystal Guardian
Worshipped by: The Order of the Pure
Home Plane: The Ascent of the Divine
The Goddess of Purity, Pristi is a being of crystal and glass, clad only in a bronze glow that emanates from every facet of Her body. With copper eyes and golden hair, there is none other like Her on the Mount. Pristi stands fast at the base of the heavens, wielding the massive flaming sword Ulmakon to keep those unworthy of treading on the Diamond Walk to the heavenly realms. No corruption stands before Her gaze; no shadows fall upon Her light.
After completing the Ascent of the Divine, souls arrive at Pristi’s Gate – a massive gold and glass edifice that towers over the world between worlds. None but the pure-hearted may pass through it, and woe be it to any minion of the Abyss that challenges Her. Those that worship Pristi in life are rewarded with crystal bodies in death, and are given the glory of spreading light throughout the heavens.
Solinal, the God of Peace, the Mediator, the Quiet
Worshipped by: The Order of the Serene
Home Plane: The Ascent of the Heavens
Solinal’s role in the World after the World is not to reward souls, but rather, to unburden them. Every soul that is destined for the heavens must first walk the Ascent. No person is ever perfect in life, and while not every soul may be deserving of the Abyss, no darkness may be permitted past Pristi’s Gate. As such, they spend time along the Ascent with their sins ebbing away and their hearts becoming attuned to the glory of the Pantheon.
Solinal also directly tends to the River Solindal, the River of All Souls that flows from the Origin and into the Sands and eventually into the Abyss. Souls that trek through the Ascent end their journey by bathing in Solindal’s waters; once infused with purity, they may cross to the Gate. The taint of their sins flows into the lower realms before congealing along the shores of the Abyss.
Followers of Solinal spend their afterlife by guiding others up the Ascent, and onward to glory. His realm is a lush, brilliant mountain climb filled with grasses of every shade, trees of every species, streams from every land, and animals of nearly every stripe.
The Upper Elemental Gods
Elemental Gods
The elemental Gods hold a special place in the World after the World. In many ways, they are agents of The Neutral, but they are the children of the Goddess of Nature – lifting them up (and dropping them low). The Elemental Gods that inhabit the Pantheon exist on the Periphery of the Mount, yet the Heavens would be unable to exist without them. In those realms, the elements are refined into their purest forms and are filled with otherworldly beings that are nigh-impossible for mortal men to comprehend (and are confusing even to the other Gods). In the Abyss, the Fallen Elemental Gods serve as the foundations of the Pit, and often contain some of the worst torments in eternity.
Corsi, Goddess of Air, the Eternal Dancer
Worshipped by: The Whispers
Home Plane: Allaloria
Corsi, the ever-fickle, the ever-floating, the eternal dancer. Her will is literally the breath of all things living, and Her touch can bring joy or sorrow. Too fickle for the mortal mind to understand, She comes and goes as sudden as a snap of your fingers, as subtle as a barely-there breeze, or as spectacularly as a gale.
Unlike the bulk of the Gods (but like Lumina), Corsi never lost Her love of Niasmis. At times She aids the Matron (Her grandmother) by lending her a breeze to carry forth a whisper on the wind to those that have the ability to hear…
Hircanton, Demi-God of Storms
Worshipped by: The Omen-Callers
Home Plane: Vapstoria
One of the many Demi-Gods under the gaze of Kora’thi, Hircanton is responsible for managing the weather. Depicted as having two faces, His nature can either bring life or death. He shares His realm with Corsi, the Elemental Goddess of Air. His territory is an ever-shifting cloudscape of snow and rain that circles the underside of Corsi’s home and eternally brings pure water to the realm of Aqualla below. To visit Hircanton’s home of Vapstoria is to fly through unceasing clouds and spring showers; to dance between raindrops the size of a pin and others the size of mountains. To visit is to slide over rainbows and to ride the clouds on boats of pure silver.
Illiya, the Goddess of Flame
Worshipped by: The Order of Flame
Home Plane: Infer
Ruler of Infer, the Upper Elemental Plane of Fire. Illiya is the Matron Goddess of the Civan Empire, and one of the five children of Kora’thi. Illiya’s essence brings heat to the world, warmth to the cold, and is oft depicted as a force for purity and a light against the dark. To live in Her world is to bask in eternal warmth and light while surrounded by flames of every hue that dance and crackle with joy and glory. Infer sits inside the Mount proper, and the heat from Her realm is felt in every inch of the Upper Eternities.
Illiya is an incredibly active Goddess and not necessarily for the best. Her nature – warm as it is – is also chaotic. She has an ongoing rivalry with Her sister, Melia, the Goddess of Destruction that is directly responsible for the Imperium Wars between Dawnfire and Civa in the mortal realm. It is also worth noting that the followers of Illiya despise the Goddess Niasmis so strongly and fiercely that they persecute and kill anyone that bears allegiance to the Goddess of Love given any and all opportunities.
Istalla, the Queen of Pure Ice
Worshipped by: The Order of Frost; Matron Goddess of the Snowy Peaks of Crys
Home Plane: Tundrala
The Queen of the Pure Ice, and ruler of Tundrala – the Upper Elemental Plane of Ice. Generally left alone, Her Stewards act as archivists and historians, as Ice preserves and protects all things in silent and peaceful cold. Tundrala is considered a realm so pure, so pristine, that it is guarded with a ferocity not known in the other heavenly realms, and actively patrolled by the Episturine; elemental beings of shifting ice that destroy any corruption the moment that it crosses over. The other beings within it defy most description – floating shards of sentient ice, walking glaciers, and wisps of snow that dance and sing the glory of Istalla with every frozen breath.
Kora’thi, Goddess of Nature
Worshipped by: The Order of Nature
Home Plane: The Mount of Heaven
Goddess of Nature. She controls all-things Growth, and is the mother of the elemental Gods and Goddess. Her followers respect the lesser Gods of Nature, and have been known to work with them in the past. Kora’thi’s realm IS the Mount itself, and She holds sway over all of Her children: the Elemental Gods Lumina, Istalla, Illiya, Melia, Corsi, and Stilmatheric. She rejects Her own mother, Niasmis, although their relationship isn’t as strained as it is with the other Gods.
Lumina, Demi-Goddess of Stars, the Lightbearer
Worshipped by: The Order of Light, the Order of Stara
Home Plane: The Above
Lumina brings light to the world, the heavens, and in some of the dankest shadows of the Abyss. The sun rising and falling every day, the sheen of the moons, the twinkle of the stars above, the glow from torchlight – everywhere light is, Lumina’s touch is not far behind. Her position above the Pantheon allows Her to oversee the worship of those that wish to give honor to all the Gods, and a haven to those that seek the peace offered by the heavens.
The Above is a realm that sits between the Origin and the rest of the Eternities, and souls that fall from the Creator of Gods are guided to the mortal world by Her hand. Those that serve in the Order of Stara worship Her directly and provide Her light to all those that seek it, while those in the Order of Light welcome all souls that need the holy – and direct them to the Gods of the Pantheon that they can serve best.
Lumina has a deep alliance with Niasmis, although Her followers do not share the same adoration. The Hardening turned the followers of the Panethon against those that carry Love with them, yet once Niasmis began to punish those that dwell in the dark, Lumina offered Her services to help drag them into the light…
Melia, the Goddess of Destruction, the Lady of Ashes, the Beginning and End
Worshipped by: The Order of Destruction
Home Plane: The Grand Palace of Reformation
Melia is an elemental force that by all rights, should not have a place in the Heavens. Her entire being, Her entire essence, is rooted in devastation and annihilation. She is the anathema of peace and order. Yet it is through Her that the decrepit and the broken are washed away and can turn into new creation. Were it not for Her, all things would stagnate and entropy would bring all of creation to a halt – ending life as any of the Gods know it.
The Grand Palace of Reformation is a creationist’s paradise. Destroyed and rebuilt time and time again, it is perfection that is changed to perfection that is changed to perfection; each new form a new brilliance, each new form a glorification of every element and every act of holiness. It is said that unlike the other Elemental Gods, there is none in the Abyss that is Her true opposite – although the Goddess of Madness claims Melia as Her mother.
Melia is in a long-standing open conflict with Her sister, Illiya, despite the efforts of Solina, Niasmis, Pristi, and Kora’thi to quell it. Both claim that Their efforts allow for creation to reign in every world, yet neither are willing to admit that both are right. Their dispute in the Heavens has resulted in a series of open wars in the mortal world; Their angst being felt so strongly that the Kingdom of Dawnfire wages war with Illiya’s followers in Civa every few years. Makaral is often impressed, and courts both of Them from time to time.
The Goddess of Destruction has recently begun to make amends with the Goddess of Love. In part, it is due to the simple desire to anger Illiya, but in part, it is because the paladins and exorcists that answer to Niasmis are quite good at sowing destruction and mayhem in their wake.
Stilmatheric, Elemental Lord of Stone, the Stonehewn
Worshipped by: The Unders
Home Plane: The Core of the Heavens
The God of Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins, Trolls, and other things that wander the tunnels and caverns below the surface. Also known as the Drunk God – because let’s be honest, nobody sober would have created the dwarves. He is not the God of the Damians, however, and they openly view Him with scorn.
Stilmatheric could easily be called the God of Patience, as He is so stoic and so steady that it is rare to see action from Him at all. Still, He is revered by those that call the undertunnels of Kora home, and adored by any that ever bring chisel to stone or shovel to dirt. He is the true backbone of creation, and generally has very little care for the coming and goings of the other Gods on the mount. He was instrumental for carrying out the Hardening of Hearts against Niasmis, however, as He used His ability to control stone to solidify the souls of all mortal beings that ever set foot on the ground.
The Neutral
Situated somewhere below the Pantheon but above the Fallen are Gods that are outside of the realm of Good and Evil. The Elemental Gods would fit in this category, were it not for the dual nature of all elements (life and death) that have earned them seats on the Pantheon and Canyons in the Pit. However, Uoom (the God of Death), Makaral (the God of War), and Eberenth (the Goddess of Knowledge), along with a scant few others – consider themselves neither aligned with the Heavens or the Abyss, and walk both sides of the next world relatively freely.
Eberenth, the Goddess of Knowledge, the Reader, the Writer, the Sage
Worshipped by: The Seekers
Home Plane: The Vast of Estachavol
The Sage could be considered the most potent of all of the Gods – shy of the Origin – if she sought any kind of power as most would assume it. All things that can be known, will be known, and are known are at Her fingertips, save one simple tome held by another of the Neutral.
Scholars of all stripes come to Her, yet She is not interested in worship. She considers Herself above such petty things and is only interested in Knowing. Her realm, the Vast of Estachavol, is as large as the world in the middle, as daunting as the world above, and as deep as the pit below. All manner of glory and all manner of damnation can be found in the books She writes and in the tomes She stores in the vastness of Her library.
Those that seek a higher understanding of the world or the history of anything come to Her for aid even if they never call upon Her. Her essence can be found on every scroll and in every book. She is the only God that the Granalchi Academy deigns to honor, a feeling similarly expressed by the Fellowship of the Alchemetic.
The Vast of frequently visited by the Stewards of Ice when they seek to preserve specific portions of Her realm for whatever reason. They are not alone; any that seek to learn come to Her feet, but not all walk away happy.
There is one thing She wishes to know, but is rebuked each time She attempts to touch it, yet the one that holds the one source of knowledge as great as She is is also Her greatest protector. It is said that Death brings to Her the knowledge of each soul when it passes… and prophecy states that if Death ever comes for Eberenth, all things of every world will end.
Makaral, The Berserker God, the God of War
Worshipped by: The Chosen
Home Plane: The Bloodsands
Markaral fits in an odd place in the hierarchy of the Gods. Most would consider the bloodsoaked God of War to be one of the Fallen, but His realm sits in the Sands beyond the Veil. He is the Patron of Warriors, the Eternal Battle, the God to Whom countless sacrifices have been offered in the names of Conquest and Power. Yet for every tyrant that wages war against his neighbor, for every queen that seeks nothing by glory and territory, there are those that fight to protect the innocent and save their homes and battle to fight injustice. It is impossible to judge someone simply for the fact that they wage war, but for what reason.
The Bloodsands are the home for those that battle to determine which side of eternity they land on. The honorable against the dishonorable, those with evil hearts and those that fight only because they have no choice. If your life ends in battle, the Bloodsands are where you will be sent to be judged worthy of the Heavens or to be plunged into the Pit. You will also find those that war for the sake of no other reason but the glory of war, and they are rewarded with battles that will continue for eternity.
Makaral Himself also sits in the eye of judgment. Prophecy states that were there ever be such a time that peace reigns in all corners of the mortal world, His own fight will end – and His fate will be decided by the cries of the blood-soaked dirt at His feet.
Monetial, God of Luck
Worshipped by: Everybody
Home Plane: The Place That Is There and The Place That Isn’t
No order serves Monetial. Every order serves Monetial. No person ever praises Monetial; every person praises Him. Luck is integral to man’s success; Luck doesn’t exist. He is there. Maybe. Or maybe He isn’t. Or maybe He is one of the Fallen. Or maybe He is one of the risen. Maybe His home is a castle full of riches and wine and concubines for any and everyone. Or maybe His home is burning pit of loss and the gnashing of teeth.
Everyone needs Him. Everyone hates Him. Everyone adores Him. But maybe He doesn’t exist at all.
Or maybe, just maybe, He sits in the middle of the Veil at a simple wooden table in the basement of a simple stone dwelling with softly-burning candles a tankards of bland ale at His side. Each moment of each second, maybe He rolls a single, icosahedron-shaped die again and again to determine exactly how things happens and to whom, and how blessed or cursed their fates may be.
Woe unto those that have their fates rolled up as ‘one.’
Uoom, the Great Reaper
Worshipped by: The Omega
Home Plane: The Sands
The God of Death. The End. The Last One. The Living Suicide.
Uoom is the hand that touches the hearts of men or the souls of the departed. His is the path to the City of Woe and the Ascent of the Divine. His is the receiver of all life, and He will be the last to ever die when eternity comes to an end. All life that comes to a close is plucked from one world or another and passes through the veil and into His realm, the Sands, to have the sinful separated from the holy, and the lost from the found.
Uoom’s Ledger is the only record in all of creation of every man, woman, child, animal, angel and demon that was ever born or made – coupled with an ever-growing list of souls that have been and will be sent to everlasting eternity in one form or another.
Those that worship Death neither discover the riches of the Mount or the suffering of the Pit. They, like all that their God represents, are thought to simply turn to dust and are forever cast adrift into the ever-changing landscape of the Sands.
The Lower Elemental Gods
Below the entrance to the pit – some closer to the top than others – the Lower Elemental Gods hold sway. While all elements are dual faced, the facets that give life exist in the upper realms, and the parts that don’t…
Just as the elements are the building blocks of life, they are also the building blocks of suffering. Some of the worst torments are relegated to those that are condemned to suffer in these realms, and their fates are not to be envied.
Charnac, God of Cinders and Ash
Worshipped by: The Order of the Ember Tears
Home Plane: The Emberforge
Charnac is a God that is more feared than He is hated. While His planar opposite brings warmth and purity and life with the heat of Her touch, Charnac brings one thing and one thing only: annihilation. Where Charnac walks, mountains spew lava and forests burn out of control. Where He screams, bodies are reduced to puddles of bubbling gristle.
He is also respected. Somewhere hidden in every smithy, in every bakery, in every glassworks or beside a potter’s kiln, you will find an offering of a small piece of burnt flesh (hopefully animal – but who knows?) nailed just out of sight. A reminder that but for the grace of the flames, that ash could be their own.
No soul ever enters any of the Abyssian canyons willingly, but those that gain the attentions of Charnac have to be pulled into the Emberforge kicking and screaming. It is a place where not even demons dare to dwell for long; a planar region divided into three different levels of raw agony. Monsters from the Emberforge roam the rest of the Abyss to find fuel for Charnac’s fires… as failure to provide fuel for Him means it is their turn within the flames instead.
The first is the Furnace of the Forge, where the damned are stuffed into crematoriums that heat the Abyss. The second is the Pipeworks, where screaming souls are lashed to metal pipes – or have pipes run through them – that carry super-heated steam and smoke into the vastness of the pit. It is said that the screams from the this level of the forge rival the rest of the pit (and that the Bard of Dismay Himself uses them for some of His sonnets).
The uppermost level of the Emberforge is the Sea of the Molten, where the condemned are stuffed inside copper serpents that swim through a vast expanse of liquefied iron. The heat from the molten metal outside the serpents broil the damned across every inch of their entrapped flesh – and when a soul is truly unlucky in death, the serpents are plucked out of the molten sea to be brought before Charnac and His hammer….
What happens to them next is not quite known, but the armaments of the Abyss must come from somewhere.
Lethandra, Goddess of Night, the Matron of Thieves, Dancer of Shadows
Worshipped by: The Cloaked
Home Plane: Blackmoon
Lethandra has an interesting position. Darkness is not an inherently ‘evil’ experience, despite how many people feel about it. It is simply the absence of light, and is an elemental force. For and by all intents, She has done nothing to deserve being cast below the Mount, but as the Heavens are a place of eternal light, She is forever forbidden from crossing the Gateway to the Mount.
That said, Her realm is not in the Canyons, and not below the horrible ravages of the Nul’Kotak. Blackmoon hovers over the Abyss, an eternal pall of shadows that cloaks the pit in darkness. Souls that cannot be redeemed in the Sands may find a home there, or ones that simply gave no care for the Gods in one way or another – but who aren’t deserving of punishment themselves. It is almost a world in and of itself; a place of rivers and oceans, forests and deserts. It is a reflection of Kora – an otherworldly shadow of the realm of mortals.
That isn’t to say that some inhabitants aren’t tormented. She is the Matron Goddess of Thieves and Assassins, and while She offers some semi-comfort for those that acted with honor (tainted as it may be), sin is still sin, and must be handled accordingly. There are things that go bump in the night, and those things have many, many teeth…
Neph’kor, God of Rot, the Lord of Disease, the Plaguebearer, the Despoiler
Worshipped by: The Order of Growth, The Circle
Home Plane: Faegoli’s Bog
The God of Plague and Disease. Universally loathed and despised, even among the other Fallen. He may well be the most hated God in all of creation. His essence can be found anywhere and everywhere; in each sneeze, in each piece of wilted grass, in each boil, in each bucket of piss. All living things that take their final breath turn into instruments of His will.
Demented and maddened by His own essence, Neph’kor believes He is the true Lord of Growth and that Kora’thi is an impostor that sits on His rightful throne in the Heavens. He believes that without His essence, food could never grow, oxygen could never come from plants, and life could never rise from destruction. He has a point enough, and followers everywhere that have come to His twisted ideas. His realm is a rarity; the only one to be granted a title based off of the actions of a mortal.
Faegoli was once a man, and the first man to ever be swayed by Neph’s message. He was granted to be a caretaker of the place of all refuse in the Abyss and it was named after him – Faegoli’s Bog. All manner of detritus falls onto or washes into the stagnant waters of the Bog – ashes from the Emberforge, froth from Zell’s frozen seas, blood that drips from Makaral’s domain, dirt from graves dug in Covorn’s Quiet, stillborn demonic fetuses delivered in the Fleshpits. Everything that is ever broken, everything that is ever ruined, everything that ever festers… it falls into the Bog to rot until the end of time.
In recent years, Neph’kor has begun to war against Niasmis. Her priests work tirelessly to purge the corrupt from the living world and send back the damned and toxic. He finds Her efforts to be an anathema to His, leading to open battles between the two as He seeks to corrupt Her worshipers while they seek to cleanse His…
Neph’kor’s son, Pymondius, has climbed out of the Bog and managed to carve out a Canyon of His own with His own gaping maw. Infuriated by this betrayal, yet honored that His own creation could climb so high, Neph’kor gleefully awaits the day for the God of Gluttony to fall – so that He can be reminded that rot begins from within.
Zell, the Brineblood
Worshipped by: None
Home Plane: Frosel
The Fallen God of Elemental Ice, and ruler of the plane of Frosel – the Lower Elemental Plane of Ice. Zell has no worshipers, only those that fear Him – and for good reason. Mariners curse His name and mortals hide from His seasonal wrath. While Istalla’s ice is true and pure, Zell’s ice chokes life out of warmth, chills souls, and brings death every winter.
Frosel is an ocean of horrors – glaciers covered in gnashing teeth and rending claws, demonic birds that circle and dive, plucking brine-soaked souls free of the toxic slush to rip them in half before pitching them back into the froth. Under the waves is no better; the depths hide monsters the likes of which are never to be seen… monsters that eagerly await the damned to sink under the water.
The Fallen Gods
Those that stir the basest of evil within the hearts of men, Those that delight in turning mankind against itself, and Those that bask in the suffering of the souls set before them. Tempting and tormenting, growing in power upon the backs of every last corrupted and vile and desperate person that comes before Them, the Fallen Gods are the source of all the evil in the world.
And most of Them love every moment of it.
Some of Them, however, are as tormented as the mortal souls cast into the pit.
Avaritisha, She of Lust, Princess of Envy, Mistress of Wrath
Worshipped by: The Adored
Home Plane: The Canyon of the Uncontrolled, The Citadel of Oolas-Ulom and the Fleshpits
The Lady of Lust. Of all of the Fallen, Avaritisha is considered both one of the least and one of the greatest. She is considered the least because of all of the sins, craving the touch of another pales in comparison to the oft-bloodsoaked rampages of those with hate or greed or rot or envy or wrath in their hearts. At the same time, she is considered one of the greatest because all sin is based in a lust of something or someone – so that each soul that stumbles down into the pit bears Her mark in one form or another.
Avaritisha is the blood-sister of Geshalda, the Soul of Envy and they get along quite well. However, the same cannot be said of Her relationship with Hate – as much as She loathes Him, She has been forced into a relationship with Covorn. As He considers Her and Her nature to be the weakest of sin, He feels that She should be treated the same. When together, She is as much of a victim to Him as the souls in Her domain are to Her.
Avaritisha’s domain is dual-sided. To those guilty of ‘wrathful’ sins of lust – the rapists, the abusers of children, the covetors of animals, the pimps, and those that exploit power over others for purposes of physical pleasure – they are condemned to the Fleshpits where the cruelties they visited upon others in life is visited back upon them a thousandfold in pits full of stinging insects and worse. In the Oolas-Ulom Citadel, those guilty of adultery, non-victimizing hedonism, unrepentant whores, and raw lust are made to serve the wishes of others as they served the wishes of their own flesh in life. Who – and how – they serve is decided by the guilt that burdens their souls in death.
There is a rumor that floats within the darkest halls of the Citadel… a rumor that claims that when the Goddess of Love lost Her standing in the Heavens, She made a deal with She of Lust – knowledge of the monstrosities of the Pit in exchange for a measure of peace and relief from the torments She suffers.
Nobody knows if She agreed, but ever since that fabled and supposed meeting, the torments in the Citadel have been distinctly muted for the bulk of the sinners within…
Covorn, Overseer of Hatred, Soul of Wrath
Worshipped by: The Order of the Ultimate
Home Plane: Covorn’s Quiet
The Lord of Hate. All things anger, wrath, envy, jealousy, and especially hate against those for the color of their skin or their sex – it all flows through Him. Yet for all of His loathsome ways, He seeks calm and peace above all else. In a twisted attempt to find it for Himself, His realm – Covorn’s Quiet – is an empty, barren plain littered with rocks and scattered bone-white tree trunks. Beneath the ground, however, are those that raged in life. Each grave is filled with one sinner made two; the soul experiencing the suffering as one and eternally forced to unleash their wrath upon themselves in burning stone coffins.
Covorn is seen as one of the worst of the worst, shy only in sin to Neph’kor. As Neph perverts the natural order, Covorn perverts the hearts of men. An argument is often made that He is the originator of all darkness in the hearts of mortal men and immortal beings – and the truth isn’t far from that. He sees Himself as the father to the Fallen, though none of Them agree.
As the most powerful, He has taken the Goddess of Lust, Avartisha, as His unwilling concubine; His hateful nature being the strongest of all the Fallen, He holds a special disdain for the Goddess that appeals to the basest and easiest of sins for a soul to be trapped in. The suffering He visits upon Her is unheralded in even the deepest dankest sloughs of the pit.
One day, He might have to answer for that.
Geshalda, the Covetous, the Lady of Many Titles, and the Soul of Envy
Worshipped by: The Unfulfilled
Home Plane: The Grand Hoard
Queen. Empress. Lady. Maiden. General. Justicair. Captain. Admiral. Officer. Duchess. Maestar. Arch-Priestess. Dunesire. Chief. Marauder. Luminary. Adept. Executioner.
Goddess.
The Jealous One, the Lady of Many Titles. She covets everything in every world, in every place, in every reality. She bears so many titles because She wishes to have them. She is the blood-sister of Avaritisha, the Soul of Lust, as uncontrolled desire and uncontrolled want go hand-in-hand.
Geshalda’s realm seems to stretch for eternity in every direction, as space itself is a thing She covets. Every inch of Her canyon, the Grand Hoard, is covered by every imaginable trinket and mundane object ever known to man or God. Every moment of every day, more rains down onto the ever-growing mounds. She is never satisfied, and Her realm feeds itself the same way.
Souls trapped in Her home suffer in one of two ways: they are either pinned in place and are forced to watch everything they have ever wanted be crafted from their flesh and destroyed before their eyes. Some are simply made into wraiths which is less a physical pain as it is psychological (although their bodies are first given to mobs of the desperate greedy to be ripped to shreds). Rendered incorporeal, they never able to touch, never able to feel, never able to do more than hopelessly clutch at the mountains of treasure that stretch as far as the eye can see.
She, in Her quest to claim everything, has been said to have bedded each of the Fallen in one way or another. While considered horrific to even consider, there may be some truth to it – after all, She is the mother of Pymondis, the Glutton (and like a good mother, helped Him get away from His abusive father).
Gormith, the Warden, the Dragon-God
Worshipped by: The Harbingers
Home Plane: The Precipice and The Nothing
Covorn may call himself the Father of the Damned, but Gormith is the one that controls them all – and is hated with such intensity that His name is the first one cursed by any and all of the damned that fall from the Sands above. The Warden has two simple tasks: to judge, and to imprison. It is a task given to Him by the Origin Himself, and one that He never balks away from.
There is a mountain on one edge of the Abyss. Some believe that if you were to travel it, it would lead into the Sands and from the Sands, to the Heavens. It is unscalable; unasailable. It is too high for even the grandest of winged beasts in damnation to ascend. That does not mean that there are not those that escape from one punishment or another and try – or that there aren’t beasts in the pit that have reasons of their own to try to escape.
The Warden prevents that from happening.
Upon this mountain, there is a ledge. On this ledge, there is a small city, and in the middle of that city is a tower. The tower. The Tower of the Judge. A vortex leads from the Nul’Kotak and down into this hollow edifice, and souls that fall into the Abyss travel through an electrified maelstrom that rips through their flesh and writes their crimes in scars along their bodies with bolt after bolt of lightning until their sins are as open and exposed as any tome.
The Dragon-God sits at the base of this vortex and plucks souls from the winds as He sees fit. Once read for the miserable pile of secrets that they are, He casts their husks into the open air of the Abyss – aimed with perfect precision to allow them to land where their due will be meted out.
He is not alone.
There are… things… people, perhaps, that dwell in this city. That “live” in the Precipice. They carry out His word and serve as His emissaries. They serve to return the worst of the damned that may have found a way free of the Abyss – it is an old prison, and old prisons have cracks – and their methods are never more than He feels just. But what is just to the God of Punishment is not oft considered just by those that stand in their way…
…those that run afoul of the Harbingers of Gormith.
Hovoth, Maestro of Screams, Bard of Dismay, Soul of Terror
Worshipped by: The Saints of the Dreadsinger
Home Plane: Labyrinth of Levistus
Hovoth is a special case, even among the ranks of the damned. The essence of fear itself? There is no place in the pit that Hovoth cannot and does not travel, much as Solinal can travel the entirety of the Pantheon. He sings the sound of screams, dances to cries of anguish, and smiles at the look of realization when it first dawns in the eyes of the newly-damned where their fates have delivered them.
The Labyrinth of Levistus is an ever-shifting maze of terror, each one worse than the last, each turn a new way to frighten or horrify a soul. It is a world of pain and torments, an all-encompassing chamber of every fear known to man, every demonic delight known to the pit. It is a veritable playground for the Fallen, and the souls within are often used as playthings when the tortures of their own home Canyons grow boring.
Pi, She of Madness
Worshipped by: The All-Seers
Home Plane: None
Pi is everywhere in the pit. Some say She IS the pit. As sanity ebbs, as the voices within become the voices without, as nightmares roll through a mind and then into reality, Pi is there. Constantly changing constantly speaking constantly screaming and whispering and moving and twisting and staying still – Pi is everywhere
In the mortal world, those that follow Her siren call realize that to know the beginning and end of the eternities, one must be able to see them – and so they try.
Yet…
There is a story that says Pi was not the Goddess of Madness when She was given breath. It is said that She was the first Goddess of Knowledge and held the one tome denied Elbereth; but the knowledge of how all things ended, coupled with how all things began, was too much for Her mind to take. It is even said that the tipping point for Her descent into the pit was the day She obtained Uoom’s Ledger – and is why the God of Death guards it so closely now.
It goes without saying Her followers are equally as insane.
Pymondis, the God of Gluttony, the Despoiler of Food, the Befouled Glutton, the Prince of Rot.
Worshipped by: The Ever-Hungry
Home Plane: The Chasm
Even by the standards of the Abyss, Pymondis is a vile thing. The son of the God of Disease, Pymondis is a gluttonous monstrosity that wallows in the fruit of the world, and gorges Himself on the spoiled remnants. His influence can be felt with every wasted crumb, every piece of spoiled game, and every piece of fruit consumed by worms. His father is both proud and displeased of His minor climb out of the Bog, and eagerly awaits the rot within His gullet to bring ruin to His obscenely obese being.
Pymondis’s plane is little more than a shit-soaked ledge on an outcropping near the Precipice of the Abyss. He watches the churning Nul’kotak above unceasingly, envious beyond measure of it’s all-consuming nature. Those souls that are unlucky enough to fall at His feet have no special punishment laid out for them, nothing that was hand-crafted specifically for them by the hands of the Great Warden. They simply meet the only fate that is suitable for the gluttonous:
They are swiftly scooped up and swallowed, and digested in His gut before being shit into the lower realms of the Abyss.