Aher the Green

The Wind Rider, the Ever-Changing, and He Who Sleeps Within.

LADY: Green is the color of earth, of living things, of life.

GAWAIN: And of rot.

LADY: Yes. We deck our halls with it and dye our linens. But should it come creeping up the cobbles, we scrub it out, fast as we can. When it blooms beneath our skin, we bleed it out. And when we, together all, find that our reach has exceeded our grasp, we cut it down, we stamp it out, we spread ourselves atop it and smother it beneath our bellies, but it comes back.

It does not dally, nor does it wait to plot or conspire. Pull it out by the roots one day and then next, there it is, creeping in around the edges. Whilst we’re off looking for red, in comes green. Red is the color of lust, but green is what lust leaves behind, in heart, in womb.

Green is what is left when ardor fades, when passion dies, when we die, too. When you go, your footprints will fill with grass. Moss shall cover your tombstone, and as the sun rises, green shall spread over all, in all its shades and hues. This verdigris will overtake your swords and your coins and your battlements and, try as you might, all you hold dear will succumb to it.

Your skin, your bones.

Your virtue.

— Monologue from The Green Knight

Lord of Skies and Wind, Aher is the Saohri god of nature and death. He is what lives and dies, but also what remains, the eternal change that moves the world- he is time itself.

As with all other major divinities of the Saohri Pantheon, Aher the Green is known to have three major Adegho: The Wind Rider, the Ever-Changing, and He Who Sleeps Within. It is most common for people to worship either Aher the Winder Rider, or Aher of The Decay, though the temple of Altebieat actively worships all aspects of the god.

The cult of Aher is an esoteric and mysterious one. Priests must go through several initiation rites in order to be admitted into the Temple of Aher the Green. Devout worshippers of the god speak a language of symbols and rhymes, and remain far away from the metal cages of civilisation.

Origins and Myths

Aher is the only of the Saohri gods to predate the existence of Matazel. He is eternal, never born, never dead.

The god cares little for the affairs of mortals. He simply is, unstoppable and uncaring. Time will pass, and so death will come to all. Aher transcends all that is and ever was. Theologists have struggled to pin down the nature of the god in rational ways, pushing his early worshippers to abandon the tools of reason and pursue a more mystical understanding of the god.

Across history, a bond of some sort was created between Aher and Kirïal the Silent, god of the afterlife. Popular depictions tend to portray them as either two sides of a same coin, a way of expressing the link between the world of the living and that of the dead.

Names: Aher the Green, the Throneless King, the Wind Rider, The Ever-Changing, Aladhi fi Aldahk, Al'aerif min Sirun, and many other titles

Dedicated Town: Roussi

Apperance: In ancient depictions, it was common to see Aher as a skeleton riding a white horse known as wind. Modern depictions tend to show him in a decomposing form, covered in leaves and other garnments made of plants and fur.

Domains: God of time, change, cycles, secrets and nature.

Divine Symbol: A white spiral, often found on tree trunks and the like, or a green ring.

Temples: Temples of Aher are rare, and exclusive to the initiate of the Temple of Aher .

Scriptures: One of the most well known texts of the Temple of Aher is the Book of Spirals.

Worship and Cult

Priests of Aher are few in number, and they are rarely seen in large cities. They prefer to remain away from the fruits of civilisation, favouring instead the natural world where they feel closer to their god. They are secretive, and live communal lives among themselves.

Aher the Throneless King by Aijxjx

They speak the language of the world, where symbols and poetry abound. It is they only way they have found to express the fundamental and transcendant nature of their god- rational thoughts cannot do him justice. Prayers are feverish, passionate, as the priests cry and hit their chests in a furious dance. They are told in forests and caves, around fires, shadows stretched against the red of the flames.

Priests of Aher are known to produce some of the best poets Danatelian society has known, Benjam Taihmul among them. They are often hard to penetrate, and many rumours speak of dangerous Aherian poems who would drive mad those foolish enough to speak them.

Becoming an Priest

There are no precise or well known guidelines explaining how one becomes a priest of Aher. It is a calling, and those destined to become priests will always find themselves where they ought to be. That is not to say priests of Aher believe in fate, or destiny: in fact, they actively reject these notions as they go against the freedom so dear to their god.

However one finds themselves among priests of Aher, they must go through rites of initiation. These are one of the many secrets of the cult of Aher, and nothing is known of them by the uninitiated. Rumours abound on the nature of these trials- some claim they are asked to eat the beating heart of a sheep, or even engage in acts of canibalism, while others claim priests of Aher go on spiritual journeys into the world of gods.

Temples of Aher the Green

You shall walk into the maze of green, and loose yourself in the sprial of white. Walk, until your feet bleed, until the red of life seeps in the green of moss. Then you will see: all that lives will die.

— Extract from the Book of Spirals

Temples of Aher are constructed following weird and confusing patterns, often incorporating many natural aspects into them. The very first temple of Aher was built among the decayed skeleton of a forgotten giant, found by a priest who had followed messages from their god. Entering a temple of Aher is a spiritual journey in and of itself- as one moves through the complex structure, one must die and be reborn.

Altebieat is one of the most well known temples of Aher, and the only one that is accessible to the non initiated. It is at the heart of Roussi, and was built purely for diplomatical reasons pertaining to the inner politics of the Saohri Temple. It is a large garden built in the shape of a spiral, which priests of Aher mostly use a communal house for the citizens of Roussi. It is one of the main point of contacts that priests of Aher have with non initiates.