Deities (Tirr Supplement)
The group of entities known as deities in the World of Tirr fulfill a broad swath of shapes and interests, using semi-primordial power to influence the universe around them with regards to their whims. Most knowledge beyond that of general appearance, ideals, and other surface traits are hidden from the mortal races of Tirr, with even few of the eldest races knowing little of the true nature of the gods.
A Brief Explanation of the Gods
Origins and Nature
Unlike the races of man, elf, and kin of the planes later developed by the deities from the roost of the Deific Sphere, deities do not have the same type of "free will" that subsequent races possess, in so far as that can be interpreted as being able to make conscious choices regarding one's moral, rational, and logical actions, including and not limited to deviation. While this is not typical of knowledge that any mortal possesses, deities are formed wholly from ideals. These are often thought of as parameters engineered by mortal understanding to judge the world experienced around itself, but in reality were the first great powers to move through a newly formed universe, during a time that became known to gods as the First Era; The mysterious time when the universe formed the first sphere, known as the Deific Sphere. Ideals are, in some ways, completely undetectable energies that seem to flow freely through both matter and energy, alike, somehow interacting with all things and directly influencing nothing. They are, essentially, amorphous wills without any known progenitor, and they are particular attuned to the characteristics of living organisms, with no recorded observations. The only entity ever having seen or experienced the time before the Age of Myths, with the ability to study the phenomena of ideals is Fate, via the Stream of Time, though she never speaks in-depth of the event, and never at all without adequate reason.
Deities such as Fate first came to life as the qualities of Ideals began to collide with two other by-products of the Life and Light. Life is little more than a powerful catalytic body of mass in the form of lighter than air particulates, often accumulating in the form of quasi-solid, amorphous masses. It contains the notable ability to, with proper application of other energy, become any element in the universe of Tirr, physically speaking, and every element can be traced back to it, in the records of the gods. The Light, sometimes poetically referred to as some possible overarching sentience by pantheon deities, is a mysterious, brilliant mass of power created by unknown forces prior to the First Era. Within it's formless radiance, it exhibited the qualities of extreme, rapid evolution in all matter within it's light, living and non-living. Large quantities of life became bathed in the radiance of the light, and as a result, began to quiver in the first signs of life in the vacant, newly-formed universe. As it did so, ideals from far and wide began to converge on what became the first life-forms to exist in Tirr, entirely devoted to the ideals that they were comprised of.
Merging with the rapidly developing forms of life, certain ideals conflicted with others, while others were incompatible with some, forcing Ideals to diverge and settle against one another, before tearing away from each other violently, eventually sectioning the Blood into thousands of individual colonies of ideals, still bathing in the power of the Light. From these colonies, sentience eventually developed and deities came into existence, beings which, albeit far less in population now, still exist in Tirr, to the present.
The Mad God, Varglokirr, and the Aesir
As the gods began to walk the limitless world around them, it would be many eons of evolution, creation, and sophistication before they became the intelligent beings known in the present, and as they continued to persist, they eventually experienced a great strife with the deity, Varglokirr; The event which caused the decision which sealed away the Light, and the Oath was formed: A divine pact which bound the very beings of all entities who made its pledge, through ritualistic, divine magics, to its terms. The oath was the single most divisive conflict in the history of all the Gods' existence, even parting former comrades against Varglokirr over its necessity; Some even argued that the oath, which was presented in order to never allow another deific war to occur, was similar to the tyranny Varglokirr imposed over the gods.
During this time, Tirr's Material Sphere was created; A lower world, shielded and protected from all but the smallest traces of Light, Life and Ideals. This world was split into multiple planes of existence, and remains guarded at all times by Lunar, Helios Majora and Helios Minoris, who take the place of celestial bodies for the world. The world was created to be a seal and prison for Varglokirr, allowing the deities to split the deity from his powers, and seal his spirit among the planes of the world, while keeping him deprived on the natural powers abundant in the Deific Sphere.
When differences between the two factions came to a head over the application of the Oath, however, there was only one remaining recourse: Banishment, as an alternative to an even more disastrous, factional war, to the very same world. Most developed rather intense feelings regarding this type of treatment, due to the nature of the planes they were banished to; It was a construct meant to contain their worst foe, and their banishment essentially branded them with the same level of punishment, though with their bodies and spirits intact, unlike the Mad God.
To make things worse, the Material Sphere was shielded from the Deific Sphere for the most part, with little influence from the elements so prevalent in the Deific Sphere... the source of life and power for the deities. While the ideals were all that was necessary to keep deities infused with the divine influence, the Light was what gave deities their extraordinary supernatural abilities, and was the source of their energy. This caused the banished gods, now called the Aesir, to be forced into deep slumbers in order to conserve their power, while relying on the ideals that managed to flow into the planes to maintain and build influence.
The Light and Sympatheia
It was not long after before the Gods lost one of the elements to the Material Sphere. Sympatheia, pitying the Aesir of whom had been cast out, and the mortal races that later began to thrive and exist on the planes, believed that too much temptation existed to simply annihilate the Material Sphere, as it had, in effect, become the sole source of opposition to the Pantheon, and none of its inhabitants could defend themselves adequately in such an event. In an effort to prevent that from ever taking place, and to allow respectable mortals to stand firm against any oppressive Gods, Pantheon or Aesir, Sympatheia did the unthinkable: She stole the Light. Carrying it away to the Material Plane, quickly, as the other Gods would soon catch wind of her actions. She had violated the Oath, however, allowing her only a brief period of time before her divine embodiment began to unwind, her body disintegrating as her ideals were scattered. In this time, she made sure to hide the Light, forever ensuring that only the noblest of mortal men could ever receive its blessings.
The Oath prevented the Gods from directly affecting the Material Sphere, for fear that their presence may allow the more violent of the Aesir, or even Varglokirr, whom had been divided, similarly to Sympatheia, to somehow return to full form due to bringing remnants of Light and Ideals from the Deific Sphere. This forced the Gods to reconcile that the Light was lost to them, leaving Tirr with its final collection of deities, never to gain any more until the three elements are united again.
The Deities
Thus far, three categories of deities exist in Tirr, each containing a limited but varied number of entities that exist, or at least, are notable in the history of Tirr and the events shaping it. The Pantheon is the governed order of deities who still reside in the lower levels of the Deific Sphere, The Aesir who were banished to the Material Sphere, and those deities who have perished or fallen, who no longer exist in detectable form, though are notable, and have followings among mortals.
The Pantheon
The Pantheon operates from outside of the Material Sphere, within the Deific Sphere, with the goal of maintaining order and generally safe-guarding the realm, mostly from a cosmic standpoint, and to prevent war from breaking out between the deities, as it had before.
While the Pantheon has a majority of Lawful and Neutral deities, and it also has more Good deities than it does evil ones, it generally watches over Tirr from afar with consideration to the Light, which was hidden away, within the world, and is the source of their powers.
The Aesir
Aesir is the term given to the deities who left the Deific Sphere, some more forcefully than others, when the Oath was institutionalized among the gods, there. Inhabiting the various planes of Tirr, the Aesir live among, and sometimes directly affect, the mortals who sprang up among them.
Separated from the Light and its influence by their exile, most of the Aesir are forced to rely on Ideals generated by mortals to survive. Those who are unable are forced into slumber in order to conserve their power. Some Aesir have been sleeping for centuries.
The Fallen
Several hundred deities could technically be counted among the fallen, though most of those were incurred during the war against Varglokirr and the events directly proceeding it. The most notable entries are as follows:
- Varglokirr
- Sympatheia
- Proditor
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