13th Age: Gods of Kadamar

Fizuriak, the loyal agent of the Lich King of Lost Morgos, seeks the hidden knowledge of the Sky Pyramids

The Elder Lords and the Gods

There are a handful of gods still worshipped in the world, but they are remote and feared by most; the truth is, at one time there was a great and ancient pantheon of deities, but the first Elder Lords rose to power and shattered the grip of power the gods held on the mortal plane by seizing control of a cosmic artifact known as the Crown of Infinity. Ownership of the crown not only barred the gods from the plane of man but also allowed the Elder Lords to forge the Planes from the astral essence. However the crown proved too powerful, and it tore the Elder Lords of the mythic age apart. It would be three thousand years before the Elder Lords  recovered the crown, hidden in the Planes forged in the Mythic Age, and again it led to a civil war amongst the powerful near-immortals of the world. These Elder Lords suffered greatly in their competition for power, but it was the sorcerer king Hathakor, the great Lich Obsidaros and the Fay Queen Tiriaenis of that era who saw fit to dispel the Crown of Infinity to a tomb buried so deep that it could never be found again…or so they hoped. This was a thousand years ago.

 The Crown of Infinity remains a potent force even today, buried in the deeps of the earth. The Drow, even eager for power still seek out the Crown, searching the depths with their vast armies of darkness. Meanwhile, the Elder Lords officially stand resolute in the ages-old agreement that the Crown must remain out of their hands, even as they privately scheme to find its magically hidden location.

The Crown itself continues to influence the world around it, despite being hidden away. The Crown is a fountain of eternal creation, and it endlessly sends out waves of energy that create ripples in the Planes, at the tenebrous gaps in reality where such emanations spill over into the Mortal Plane. Unknown to the Elder Lords (though suspected by some) the Crown continues to create new realms of existence out of whole cloth. It should not be “directed” to do so but somehow it is….as if there is some guiding force of will pushing the artifact to form new realms and beings. Who exactly is influencing the Crown is a mystery.

The gods persevere in their remote divine kingdoms, a part of the planar realms. Still, they all share a great desire to return to the mortal plane and affect the world directly, and create minions, send messages to oracles and prophets, imbue mortals with divine power and otherwise seek to influence the world to do their bidding. The greatest goal of all would be the destruction of their enemies, the Elder Lords, and the restoration of the Crown of Infinity to its rightful place at the height of the Temple of Datares on Mount Dol.

The gods, meanwhile, remain distant and unassailable forces, but they exist beyond the spectrum of the Planes, unable to directly influence the mortal realm. Instead the gods have elected to spread their power indirectly, through their followers. The gods include the following:

Helion, the Burning Light – the ever-burning flame of the sun is the nemesis of the Blight and the bringer of goodness, fortune, leadership and plenty. Helion is depicted as a warrior in most iconography, but his priests explain that he is the embodiment of light and flame, and no man may look upon him and live.

Males, the Blight – the power of darkness and corruption incarnate. Still called upon for divination and power by the Crusader and the Diabolist (and occasionally by the Lich King) the Blight is the essence of evil and corruption in the world. The Blight’s armies of darkness, the demons, exist on the fringe of the Planes, ever ready to escape into the Mortal realm to sew destruction. Thanos is depicted as a great mass of skeletons forming an immense, terrifying giant.

Tenebrae, the Shadow – Lurking in darkness the creatures spawned of Shadow will always feel a connection to this goddess, who dwell only where Helion cannot penetrate. She is an aspect of the feminine, of power in darkness, the mysteries of the Moon, deception and all things of the night.

Moraeos, the Dead – the god of the dead has been around since before the light itself, some stories say. It was the burning power of light that chased the dead things away and forces the darkness of Tenebrae to retreat, allowing life to blossom. The dead lurk in the earth and the dark corners of the world, an ever vile presence seeking a way of escaping the realm of Moraeos to feed upon the life force of the living. Moraeos is enigmatic, his designs inscrutable, but the Lich King holds counsel regularly with this dread god, seeking to understand his power over death and siphoning off a portion of that power for his own purposes.

Viridiae, the Green – The goddess of the living, she sprung up in the wake of the manifestation of Helion out of the eternal darkness. Where his light fell upon the earth the shadow and death disappeared and life sprang anew. Viridiae is the goddess of the living world, and is sometimes simply known as The Green. Despite her aspect as life-bringer, she is also a dark nature goddess, for her bind is firmly rooted between the light of the sun above and the tendrils of death below; so it is that she is representative of the bridge between the two forces.

Somniae, the Dreaming – the god of sleep and the realm of dreams is perhaps the only one who seems to retain a close tether to the Mortal Plane, for all mortals seem capable of accessing fragments of this realm and communing with its god, though for most the experience is fragmentary and easily forgotten. Stories tell of how the waking world and the plane of dreams were once two parts of the same coin of experience, and that to sleep was as profound an experience as to be awake….but the severing of the gods changed all that.