Saturday, November 5, 2011

Ages of Lingusia: Dead and Forgotten Gods


Dead, Esoteric or Forgotten Gods

Bastet                                                   

Profile: Mistress of night and cats, prowlers, wealth and luxury
Alignment: neutrality
Favored Weapons: claws, daggers, whips
   Little is known about the goddess Bastet, who was once one of the prime deities in the lost Old Galonian pantheon. Like her sister, Nephythis, she seems to have survived the death of gods and kings by moving to other planar realms, but occasionally her name or a rare worshipper will surface, and for a short time the cult of Bastis will reappear.
    Bastis is a goddess of cats, as well as the mistress of luxuries, nobility and wealth. She was once the favored patron of the elite of Old Galonia. Her temples can be found, usually submerged in the sand, in the many ruins of the land.
   Curiously, Bastet has experience a profound revival in the unlikely kingdoms of Zued and Naminthia. Here, her worship as a household goddess of the rich and elite of te land has become very popular, and a small priesthood of the cat goddess expound upon her virtues in the household. Ownership of cats has become more common, to try and gain favor with the goddess.

   Bastis appeared to be a beautiful woman with the head of a cat. Some suggest she may have created all of the feline species of Lingusia.


Beredenos
Profile: father of lost causes, alchemic mysteries, gnomes
Alignment: lawful
   Beredenos is mentioned many times in older Idean Codices. He was a venerable god, brother to Naril, and keeper of alchemical secrets. One of Beredenos’ first alchemic experiments is said to have produced the race of gnomes from the essence of gold, creating the first of their species. He was also revered as a patron of those who were tasked with the hopeless or impossible.
   Unfortunately, Beredenos was one of the gods who fell in the War of the Gods, but not before his fabled tower of alechemy erupted in a magical rift caused by his final, greatest experiment, sucking countless attackers and unnamed devonin lords in to the cosmic void, along with the very essence of this god. Whatever amazing, cosmic secrets Beredenos had uncovered, he took it with him when he left, and no trace of this god’s divine power exists in the present.
   It is possible that there may be one or two priests dedicated to this god, though they are likely to be both wizards and clerics, seeking the path of the mystic theurge and drawing clerical power from their own inner faith that Beredenos did not, in fact, destroy himself in the War of the Gods, but that he escaped through a cosmic rift in to the true seat of creation, a land from which no one, not even a god could or should want to return from. He is, of course, still revered as patron of gnomes among the short folk, who do firmly believe that he is still out there, exploring the cosmos and the planes.
   Beredenos was often depicted as a gnome of middle years, avidly pursuing some mystery or experiment.

Galon

Profile: Patron of the kings of Old Galonia, founder of the kingdom
Alignment: lawful
   Galon is forgotten by all but a handful of Galonian alchemists and scholars. Once regarded in Old Galonia as the patron god of the world and the kingdom, Galon is believed to have been the first king of that land, and favored of the gods. When he died, it is said he achieved immortality and became a demigod of the land. All kings in Old Galon thereafter were worshippers of his once great cult, and he was the lord of kings.
   When Old Galonia fell, the king’s cults collapsed and a revolution among the people left most of the old temples and libraries burned. The worship of Galon and a number of other ancient deities was eventually forgotten entirely. Only within the last four centuries, as curious scholars and antiquarians arose to study the ancient ruins of Galonia, did knowledge of this forgotten god come to light. Alchemists became especially interested in Galon, as it was revealed in some texts that Galon was purveyor of the secrets of immortality and the keys to resurrection in the afterlife. The rare scraps of text found in ancient tombs suggested that the process was less divine and far more mechanistic, replicable by modern methods of understanding. As such, knowledge of this god remains, even if his worship is gone.
   Around 2455, a scholar of Nistur named Deninar Yur sought to learn more of Galon and the other lost gods of the Galonian region. He came to believe that the worship of Galon ended around 820 aw, when Old Galon, at it’s height, conquered a land called Karak, which he believes was to be found in the region of Hitattica in the west. Shortly after the conquest of Karak, Old Galon went in to decline, and the worship of Galon ended between 900-1000. He speculates that the region of Karak did not assimilate well, and that a cultural and religious revolution pitted Old Galonia against its king-priests. Moreover, he suspects that Galon, as a god, may have disappeared or been destroyed in the celestial realms, for he finds texts which imply that the priests were abandoned by him, and no longer received divinations or miracles.
   The Order of the Blue Robes has additional information about that period, for when Xauraun Vestillios manifested in 1960 aw, he took power in New Galonia and used the labor forces to excavate the ruins of a great city in the Dead Sea region westward, in Hitattica. The Blue Robes speculate that Xauraun may have been a power in that time, and that there was a war of Order and Chaos, in which Karak fell, but Old Galon lost, as well, when Xauraun slew of banished Galon. No one can say for sure, though.

Trimelin

Profile: Monstrous Lord of the Aquatic Deeps
Alignment: neutrality
   The mystery of Trimelin is difficult to unravel. God of the watery deeps longbefore Enki came in to fashion, Trimelin is a god recognized by the intelligent aquatic races as a patron and perhaps even creator. The god has temples in some remote locations on the surface, and seems to have been a priesthood for thousands of years, but little or no written material about this god has ever been recorded. Some scholars worry that Trimelin bears a certain similarity to the mysterious ancient gods, the Kraken, but the similarities are tenuous at best.
Appearance: Trimelin is depicted as an immense squid-like being dwelling in an ancient city beneath the sea. Some aquatic beings claim to have actually visited this location, and say the god is a very real being, and that he exists only in the material realm. It is possible that he never even participated in the War of the Gods, and thus was never slain in the corporeal world.







All text copyright 2011 by Nicholas Torbin Bergquist, all rights reserved

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