Meninos (God)

Element: Evil
Domains: War, Violence, Bloodshed
Cleric Domain: War Domain
Material: If one is going to make an offering to Meninos, one must be ready to spill blood. The most popular blood to spill is Ox or Bull, of course, though allowances for Ram are frequently made in lean times. One might sweeten the deal with implements of war, but no offering is complete without blood.

Summary

Meninos is the god of War, Violence, and Bloodshed. Frequently conflated with Alophia, it is more popular to call Meninos the butcher god, the one moved to violence, the culler of the weak. While His adherents do take on these aspects of His portfolio, the most forwardly prominent churches of His point to the necessity of culling. Populations, wildlife, and society all enjoy a net benefit, they claim, for weeding out the weakest or most faltering parts of their makeup. So too, they say, Meninos does for us.

Cultural Reception

Carinthia uses Meninos as the folly of abandoning Alophia's guidance. The ruin that comes with mindless violence, with thoughtless warfare--this is the sort of path that would bring the North to fall and expose all of Halinor to the predations to dragonkind. Meninos gets no love in the northern reaches of the continent.
Aqualonde's druids contain an order that espouse a cautious worship of Meninos as a manifestation of the natural cycle of prey and predation. This worship is a small sect but one whose presence can always be felt in druidic gatherings in the Fauconwood.
Avosa Tevosa is torn on His worship. Sailors can afford to offend no Divinity after all! Some pirates hold to Meninos's darker teachings, particularly those that live in the tropical forests of the peninsula. The 'inlanders' ply the rivers and coasts for bounty and heart sacrifices they make to Meninos.
Tarwa'kem has less need for mindless violence in most of their dealings--but leave it to the merchants to learn how to have monetize it! Temples to Meninos are built upon sandstone arenas where praise to the Butcher Lord can be given in plenty. His priests are wealthy to be sure.

In Art

Meninos wears the visage of those that worship Him for the most part--humans in human depictions, dwarf for the dwarves. Elves tend to depict Meninos as an animal, however, or at least animal-headed. The bull face and horns sits right at home on a muscular, humanoid body; any time one sees a minotaur in red in elven works knows Meninos is being alluded to.
Much like the elves of the Fauconwood, Avosa's peninular raiders, the Pa'wak'te, pay homage to a powerful and divine jaguar they personify Meninos as. It is tradition here in the rainforests and nowhere else to show the gods as animals, and by far the preponderance of such depictions are of Meninos.
On the coasts and the capital, of course, Meninos is oft depicted as a brutish human wearing a jaguar skin.

The Butcher's Visage: Swear Fealty to Violent Authority by Jannalor Rokas

"In the carnage of battle, victory is the only hymn sung."