Orodamas the Ringing Hammer

Orodamas is the goddess of the forge, the restless earth, and fire. She rules the raw creative force that infuses sapient minds, being the god of artisans, obsession, and the cycle of creation and destruction. As a forge radiates heat in the area around it, Orodamas' influence provides inspiration to mortals. She makes exquisitely crafted objects almost constantly, sometimes absentmindedly working while she holds conversations with the other gods, only to destroy the finished product and begin again. Impulsive and mercurial, Orodamas is prone to bouts of either joyous productivity or frustrated anger. She often feels constrained by the limits of imagination, yearning to realize ideas that seem just out of reach.
Orodamas' preferred form is that of a muscular Dwarf woman with coal-dark ashen gray skin and eyes that burn red with fire. In this form, her hair is flaming red and catches fire at the ends. She might also appear in the form of a fiery phoenix or a bull made of cooling lava, and for that reason, both of those creatures are associated with her. When angered, she might appear as an enormous mass of lava, a blazing fire, or a volcanic eruption. Mortals who see Orodamas in one of those forms seldom live to tell about it.
The raw creative force that Orodamas embodies is chaotic, but she isn't a goddess of unbridled chaos. Rather, she shows mortals how to harness that primal energy, shaping it through passion and labor into something usable.
Orodamas is primarily associated with forging, metallurgy, and related activities. It was her followers who first brought bronze to Etheria, and a few of her most favored began working with a new incredibly durable metal said to come directly from their goddess's forge-fires just a few centuries ago. Though Orodamas is largely interested in physical craft, she sahres influence over all forms of creation with Episophon and Amapharon.
Orodamas is always ready to obliterate what is to make room for what could be, and to start the cycle again when what could be becomes what is. When she is inspired, the night sky glitters with new constellations, and automatous creatures appear in the countryside. When she is wrathful, stars vanish in molten rain, and her hammer blows annihilate whole mountaintops.
Orodamas, like Episophon, holds dominion over everything that springs from mortal ingenuity. Most artisans say a small prayer to her upon beginning or completing the construction of nearly anything, from swords to fortresses to ships. Naturally, Orodamas is strongly associated with the forge, and nearly every smithy in Etheria is a sort of ad hoc temple to her. Charms and idols of Orodamas hang from the walls in such places, intended both to inspire the artisans and protect them against accidents. Regardless of their professions, worshipers of Orodamas often light small fires in the goddess' honor, burning wooden crafts or drawings of their inventions to gain her favor.

Myths of Orodamas

The Gift of Bronze

Long ago, the mortals who immigrated to Etheria fought and hunted using weapons made of stone and wood. According to legend, it was a Satyr smith named Tecton who discovered how to refine copper ore and work it into tools and weapons. Orodamas, delighted, saw this as the mortals' first tentative steps toward true craft. Some smiths, hastily copying Tecton's methods, devised a way to blend copper and arsenic into a crude form of bronze, but the forging method was dangerous and often yielded defective results. To reward the smith who took the first steps, Orodamas appeared to Tecton and granted the satyr the secret of smelting copper and tin into true bronze. The manufacture and use of bronze weapons spread across the population and would have launched an age in which heroes conquered the wilds and founded great civilizations had it not been for the invasion of dragons which forced the pre-Etherian peoples to relocate in the move which later became called The Draconic Exodus. Though bronze had not saved them from draconic invaders, it did help the early Etherians settle the lands of Etheria. While bronze is no longer the most used metal on Etheria since Orodamas has recently decided that more than a few mortals were ready for the secret of iron, it still holds a valuable place in cultural memory, practice, and art.

The Stone Winter

In the early days of the Etherian peoples, Helionax the Light-Crowned, Theromedeon the Wild Guard, Thanatimetra the Merciful Mother, and Thalassakles the Crashing Wave were vociferously honored for the comforts of nature. Gradually, Orodamas grew bitter that mortals never acknowledged her flames, which kept the earth warm and fertile. So, Orodamas quenched the world's core. For a year, a lifeless winter gripped the world, with neither the sun nor the seasons warming the corpse-chill earth. Ultimately, it was the mortal engineer Chersio who brought about the winter's end. Instead of cursing the situation, Chersio sought a solution, creating a hypocaust system to bring warmth to her community. Delighted with the innovation, Orodamas waited until Chersio completed and lit her substructure furnace. When she did, the god returned warmth to the entire world. Today, an autumnal festival called the Kindling or the Forge-Lighting takes place to honor this kindness. During this festival, worshipers keep a bonfire burning from sundown to sunrise, acknowledging that Orodamas warms the earth and makes the harvest possible.

Orodamas' Twin

When the world was young, Orodamas was jealous of Helionax and Eleuthemene the Star-Dappled, of Thanatimetra and Theromedeon, and of Iroanos the Battle-Wise and his sibling Inyu the Bloody One, and wanted a twin of her own. She created Petra, a Godborn double of herself crafted of divine bronze with a touch of mortal flesh. Petra aged as the eons passed, and Orodamas was forced to patch cracks with strips of bronze and refill the vessel of her Godborn twin. Petra lacks the spark of true life, though, and can't speak. She toils day and night in Orodamas' forge, making wonders that would shame any mortal smith but can never match Orodamas' work in beauty or originality.

Sculpting Flesh

Long ago, there lived an Amerosian bronzesmith renowned for her work in statuary named Pygmalia. After witnessing at a local temple of Kallinephes the Thundering Heart the sexual services offered and performed by the temple clerics, Pygmalia declared in disgust that she was not interested in the desires of the flesh. Kallinephes, taking umbrage at this slight of their clerics, cursed Pygmalia, and when the bronzesmith returned to her workshop, she fell in love with the statue she had been currently working on. In time, Kallinephes' festival day came, and Pygmalia made offerings at the altar of the Thundering Heart. There, too scared to admit her desire, she quietly wished for a partner who would be the living likeness of her bronze statue. When she returned home, she kissed her bronze statue, but felt that its lips remained as cold as metal. Orodamas, seeing the heart-anguish of the bronzesmith and sympathizing with her after the loss of her own partner Kallinephes to Helionax, blessed the bronze statue so that when Pygmalia next kissed it, she found that its lips felt warm. When she kissed it again, she found that the bronze had lost its hardness. Orodamas had granted Pygmalia her wish which she had so earnestly spoken to Kallinephes only for the love god to ignore.

Divine Domains

Fire, mountains, earthquakes, cycles of creation and destruction, and the molten core of the earth; mining, smithing, crafting, metalwork, creativity, and the forge; and jewels, gemstones, precious metals, minerals, and the natural riches under the ground.

Divine Symbols & Sigils

Sacred Animals: Bulls, cranes, guard dogs, donkeys, elephants, and phoenixes.
Sacred Plants: Fennel, sycamores, and figs.

Divine Goals & Aspirations

Orodamas acts not because of grand plans or high ideals, but on the whims of her restless, creative mind. On the rare occasions when she contemplates what she would do if she were ascendant in the pantheon, her most fervent wish is to be left alone. To Orodamas, that would mean spending time by herself in her forge, creating anything she desires. But it also would mean being free to uproot mountains, topple cities, and reroute rivers without any of the other gods interfering.

Social

Family Ties

Orodamas has few strong relationships with her fellow gods, considering most of them arrogant ingrates. According to legend, it was she who created the weapons of the gods, asking nothing in return and nothing she received. This could be in part because her infrequent though memorable bouts of destructive fury have earned her more ill will in the pantheon than she realizes.
Helionax the Light-Crowned despises Orodamas's unpredictable impulses even as he envies the forge goddesses's ability to create grand works. In return, Orodamas resents Helionax's attempts to impose laws that constrain the passion of creation. In many ways, the two gods represent opposing approaches to the contradictions and challenges of mortal life, and they have more than once fought titanic battles. Moreover, Orodamas nurses a millennia-long grudge and hatred toward the solar deity for having wooed her lover Kallinephes the Thundering Heart away from her.
Thalassakles the Crashing Wave is Orodamas' closest ally in the pantheon. Imbued as she is with the malleable, quenching power of water, she knows that Orodamas can neither destroy her waves nor reforge them. Because she has no fear of the forge goddess, she treats her as a friend. Orodamas frequently makes wondrous gifts for Thalassakles, and her underwater palace holds countless unique creations of the goddess of the forge. Some speculation circles around the pantheon that Orodamas has secretly been harboring tender feelings for the sea goddess, and it would not be necessarily out of the realm of possibility.
Amaphoron the Herald of Civilization, Thanatimetra the Merciful Mother, and Ginnir the Silver-Tongued are, like Orodamas, deeply involved in the project of civilization. Orodamas's desire to overturn the established order with violence stands in stark contrast to the measured ways of Amapharon and Thanatimetra and the often deceitful ways of Ginnir. As a result, Orodamas stands aloof from them.

Divine Classification

Deity

Species

Dwarf

Gender

Female

Eyes

Lambent red-orange flames

Hair

Blazing red with fire flickering at the ends

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Coal-dark ashen gray