The Secret History of the Moon

This is not a history known to most archives or scholars; only a small handful living or dead know it fully. Turn back, those who might want to avoid spoilers. Also, this is a reference document trying to package everything neatly; the precise dates or lengths of time are unimportant and can change. Additionally, the politics of the lunar pantheon are never absolute; even at their closest they may wage proxy wars, and even at their most vicious they may cooperate. This is also hardly a comprehensive list of everything that went down - these people have been at this for two thousand years! People can create intricate relationships of mutual resentment with catalogues of beef to be had when they only know each other for a few years - extending that to such an unthinkably long time means that basically anything can happen, and that no article can ever fit the true complexity of these people's conflict and connections. This is a highlights reel more than anything. This is the history of the Lunar Pantheon as a group: their factions, intrigues, crises, and relationships and how they evolved over the centuries. It is a story of vast times and spaces, bound into a very small group of people. Do not judge them too harshly - few to none would have made it through this with clean hands and a healthy mind.

The Halcyon Days

In the beginning, the Lunar ten were professional in their disposition and generally cooperative. They had disagreements, but kept them from spilling into mortal violence. They were generally respectful to one another, and maintained a healthy emotional distance from each other as co-workers. There were some minor acts of rudeness, but nothing exceptional. For two hundred years, the ten of them kept away from personal fights or proxy violence - they had arguments, but typically just avoided each other for a bit, or talked it over, and got over it. The world below was disconnected and vast, islands of stable political and social structures in a sea of migrating people and rapid change. It seemed possible, at first, to monitor and know everything "important", and to balance the many mortal relationships needed to guide those below. The early pantheon also had its own system: everyone agreed to respect votes, which would be held on ethical and political questions that required a united front. In these days, votes were rarely called and usually on either very specific or very broad issues. Votes were by majority, and anyone could request a quorum. After the first century, this voting system was formally organized into a "government", with Jade and Lily as the symbolic self-appointed heads (as the oldest). There were attempts to unite everyone under a single code of ethics, but none of these went anywhere. The 100s ME saw Jade and Lily's "co-rulership" transform into a close friendship with rivalry overtones. Each encouraged the other to look beyond their assumptions, which often sparked fights. Jade's shared loyalty to the Chimera also was a sticking point between the two, as it bolstered Jade's ego and caused Lily to blame her for the Chimera's actions. Despite the stability of the early Lunar Pantheon, the seeds of its corruption planted quite early. There was obvious initial discord surrounding Ishkibal and his Desmian worldview, which led to him blaspheming against the Architects and insulting everyone else in the group. These insults and divisive statements mellowed over the first decade, but no one forgot that first impression. This tied into the 'Desmia Problem': no one could agree on what to do about Desmia, and consensus on the matter was never reached. And, of course, the two "co-rulers" slowly grew to resent each other even as everyone else resented their imperious declarations of status.

The Subversive Era

The late 100s saw the Lily-Jade competition spin somewhat out of control. Both expanded their reaches among mortal societies too aggressively and ended up propping up unsavory characters. Lily was more subtle in her expansion, while Jade was open, proud, and saw them as servants of her empire. The idea of someone trying to be empress eternal troubled much of the pantheon, and Theia called for a quorum to make Jade stop. The quorum agreed to censure Jade, but disagreed on what that meant. Orchid demanded that Jade hand over all information and followers to the greater group, to be reviewed and potentially seized - she wanted to use this moment to give the council real rules and regulations to bind it for the long-run. Lily immediately seized on that and saw herself as the natural regulating body, which caused Jade to condemn the quorum. Since Jade wouldn't voluntarily let go of her unruly followers, a group of gods (Lily, Theia, Orchid, and Wimbo) decided to run an interference campaign to undermine her cults. And so, the 200s began with a shadow war. This was quickly contained in the "important places", as Wimbo pressured both sides to stop once blood was actually spilt - in the "unimportant" places, rogue paladins and moon-crowned tyrants started conflicts that sometimes spiralled out of control. The only conflict that spread significantly, though, was essentially ignored for being in the least important place - the Antarctic. The end of that little adventure restored peace but left the entire group demoralized. The quorum's legitimacy was largely gone, replaced by groups conducting shadow campaigns to prevent people from taking unpopular actions. Webs of lies were quickly spun by most of the pantheon, to avoid this fate. Quorums continued, but were increasingly weaponized against individuals. Desmia, ever the controversy, became a sticking point. Ishkibal's personal cult was gathering steam in Izekra, and had become a point of argument. Ishkibal himself, having seen the power Lily and Jade were accumulating (and abusing), was returning to his Desmian roots and becoming a voice of discord across the planet. In the 230s ME, Desmian monarchs fought to define their religion more clearly - and Ishkibal moved to influence them, to bring Desmia under his banner. Emesh supported Ishkibal's campaigns, while Lily, Agamine, and Theia tried to stop him. In 240, Samvara became a center of intrigue as well - wars across the continent pitted Lily against Jade and Emesh, not by choice but by accident. Their followers and cultists were fighting each other for dominance with or without the God's approval, and the bad blood between said Gods prevented any kind of divine intervention for peace. Land after land, controversy after controversy, conflicts that would once have been mediated by the Gods instead divided them. Finally, in the 390s, Ishkibal struck out and created a semi-Desmian religious movement in Maradia. Unlike prior failed schemes, this was unique in that it actually materialized with enough force that a shadow campaign and a few years of natural decay didn't collapse it - this was a full wave of violent xenophobia and division. Theia responded quickly by fully mobilizing nearby groups; Lily followed suit. Theia ultimately defeated Ishkibal's armies in a proxy war (as well as Lily's, in the end) - it was one of the first wars conducts from Heaven, and the first to be formally recognized as such. The Subversive Era forged a handful of alliances bound by friendship and ideology:

Emesh and Ishkibal, the wildcards bound by debts to one another, each trying to convert the other quietly to their worldview
Theia and Hiku, the Nafenans who shared a vision of justice and relied on vibes
Lily and Orchid, the dryads who wanted to create a proper heavenly government
Wimbo and Agamine, who fought to end the fighting
Jade, the lone wolf still ostracized from the whole quorum debacle and blamed for the trouble that ensued, sometimes working with Haru

The Alliance Era and Blood Era

The four teams (plus Jade and Haru) would be the foundation for the Alliance era, which goes generally from 390 to 620. These alliances often made peace and worked together, and weren't official in any way, but when things collapsed into proxy wars everyone relied on these alliances to protect their interests. The alliance era might also be called the Cult Era, because it is also when the Lunar Pantheon began openly curating worshippers and building personal cults. It was happening before, but now everyone wanted multiple organized religions of themselves and it was becoming normalized between them. The Alliance era is when the Lunar Crisis in Samvara began, and when the Nafenan cult wars raged. It is also when the Lunar Pantheon reached the pinnacle of their direct power; soon, the world would become too large for them to direct with the kind of ease that they used to. While the Gods would get bigger armies and larger congregations later, they would be more dependent on mortal servants who were increasingly bold in their willingness to ignore them when convenient. The Alliance era bleeds somewhat seamlessly into the Blood era of 620 - 850, where the teams were reshuffled:

Orchid and Lily remained a team, but add Wimbo to their group
Jade and Hiku connected, as Hiku's increasing obsession with arcane secrets drove a wedge between herself and Theia, and as the old group bitterness towards Jade faded
Theia and Ishkibal teamed up, after it became clear that the other groups were forming species-exclusive alliances
Agamine withdrew after engaging in spite-fueled intrigues that shocked himself and Wimbo
Emesh fought for his own ideology and essentially struck out fruitlessly at all of them

The Blood era is differentiated from the Alliance era in that the teams are organized along species-lines, and began promoting mortals along species lines. This isn't a hard rule - these Gods had mortal servants beyond their specific species - but it represented a significant trend in how things were organized. This didn't exactly turn the world into a divided hellscape, but it definitely provided more space for species-exclusive groups to gain divine support. One could argue that the blood era somewhat began with the Orchid-Lily alliance back in the prior era; Lily and Orchid had always been particularly sympathetic to dryad-led causes, with Orchid having been raised in an environment where dryads led politics and Lily growing up in a situation where dryads had to fight to have a voice or agency. Lily, paired with Orchid, slowly became more and more convinced that dryads were natural pacifists and egalitarians better-suited for positions of power - the prisms were naturally hierarchical, as shown by the Kima Cities, and the humans were violent carnivores, as shown by Desmia, but the dryads by default were in harmony with nature. While Lily initially shut down these ideas except for when she needed to irritate Ishkibal, she became more infatuated with them during the early blood era - and as she did, she encouraged a kind of conservative retreat for Orchid as well. While Lily and Orchid played with these ideas first, it was Jade and Hiku who performed the more infamous actions. The two grew close during the late alliance period, after Hiku and Theia had their falling out - both were emotionally unstable, as Hiku's magical experiments and growing afterlife fan base led to her sabotaging her own happiness and Jade was lashing out when it seemed that she was slowly losing her demigod husband, Ghavi, to the sleepy doldrums of paradise. Hiku encouraged Jade to delve into the realm of fantasy; Jade encouraged Hiku to bring her fantasy into the real world. Together, they hyped one another and encouraged a zero-negativity, no-bad-ideas mindset that made some horrible plans seem great. Turning around some of what Lily and Orchid were talking about but mixing it with an unabashed authoritarianism, Jade and Hiku decided that prisms and half prisms were the natural solution to the world's problems: if they ran the world's governments openly or covertly, they could create global stability and return the ever-expanding world to the god's reach. So, they set about supporting any prism regime willing and loyal enough to work, and had them move to aggressively consolidate control. The most overt of these movements was in Nafena, while most other lands saw more subtle movements. This provoked overwhelming lashback from the other groups, which saw this as a threat to global peace and species equality. Ishkibal, seeing the other groups pivot, radicalized again. And, even worse, he was able to encourage Theia to join his faction, as otherwise humans would surely be forced into slavery by the other species. Envisioning humanity as the underdog, Theia began supporting Ishkibism and working to undermine all other Lunar factions. Theia remained largely reactionary, though. Wimbo and Agamine gave up on their friendship crusade during this period; slowly losing steam, and then breaking up when Agamine supported his paladins in doing a spiteful massacre of Lunar worshippers and, recognizing what he did when Wimbo called him out, promptly giving up and washing his hands of the effort to bring the pantheon back together. Wimbo was promptly targeted by Lily and Orchid and decided to try and fix their group from the inside - and ended up basically just supporting them. Emesh alone was able to sustain his ideology in a pure form during this time, though he was completely radicalized by watching the others fall. He desperately sought radical solutions to merging species and cultures, and began falling back on cultural relativism to cope with the sense that everything was falling apart completely.

The Lunar Renaissance

Peace didn't come in a burst, but a slow healing. The end of the great Samvaran and Nafenan wars helped ease the alliances apart, giving individual members less of a sense of being under constant attack. The late 700s and early 800s were a time of thawing and reconciliation. It helped that the Lunar Pantheon had discredited itself in many places, causing the Pantheon to turn inwards from the material plane. Without material gains and threats to keep the alliances together, drama began. Orchid and Lily started fighting constantly over ideological differences, and Wimbo became de-facto team leader as the tiebreaker frustrating them both. Orchid began to seek connections elsewhere, and even tried to ally herself with Theia for a bit. In the end, Orchid inserted herself into the Hiku-Jade drama by confronting Jade about their poisonous relationship and the lies Hiku had told her, causing the Prism alliance to detonate explosively. As Orchid and Jade started talking, they formed a new clique that opposed the systems they had themselves built. Theia, Emesh, Agamine, and Wimbo joined, leaving Lily, Ishkibal, and Hiku out in the cold as the 'instigators' of the Blood era. Meanwhile, Emesh was praised as the hero of the period and was talked up by just about everyone in a grand performance of good feelings and cooperation. Peace did not spring eternal. The Lunar Renaissance was not, of course, a time of endless joy - intrigues continued and what not. The exiled three, Hiku, Lily, and Ishkibal, experimented in working together to do terrorism. Emesh and Wimbo, working together, were able to get Ishkibal, Hiku, and Lily out of social exile before they for further radicalized or crystallized into a new team. The pantheon created a new policy where what happened on the material plane was considered less important than everyone's mutual friendships (not that everyone believed that as much as they told one another).

The Millennial Mania

When 1000 ME passed by, most mortals didn't realize it - they had their own calendars, and little knowledge of divine prophecy. The Lunar Pantheon certainly noticed, though. The group gathered together and scouted where the Architects might manifest; they identified four thematic thrones in Paradise that they decided were the Architect's, and waited there for their return. The Architects did not return. After a while of them waiting, Haru manifested and began verbally attacking their faith in the Architects. The nine without bodies yelled at him until he left, but a sense of quiet despair was seeded. Perhaps they were abandoned, they had misheard or they misremembered, maybe they had been lied to? Or maybe it was the end of the world. The panic festered in each of the nine in different ways. Agamine just openly panicked, become an anxious and despairing mess that would publicly doomspiral and pester the other gods with nightmare scenario fantasies. Theia, Lily, and Jade led the others in watching the planet below for signs of mortal incarnation or apocalypse, but after twenty-five years of absolute nothing the effort lost its steam. What followed is known as the 'mania' period, as social norms deteriorated and the pantheon's panic infected their closest followers in heaven. Some strange theology came out of this period, almost all of which has been desperately scrubbed from the record (the big exception being the Maradian religion of Ishket, which was reborn at the height of this chaos). Theia doubled down in zeal and devotion. Lily crumbled into despair and began blaspheming against Halcyon to get her goddess' attention. Orchid decided that the entire prophecy was a lie they told themselves and that the Architects might never be coming back; her resulting arguments with Suwota laid the initial foundations for the pantheon's fights with the Empire of Runeva . Emesh called together the panicking masses and encouraged them to try and end the world ritually (whether he believed this would work or he was just doing it because he could is unknown). Ishkibal retreated inwards, decided to hang out with new people and maybe try some drugs, and had a century of rather erratic policy. Wimbo started going down into Hell in order to give his un-life meaning again, though his adventures' inability to cause lasting change slowly morphed this into Hell fight club. Jade focused more and more on trying to look for the god's mortal incarnations and largely neglected her empire and followers; she allowed her precious Empire of Calazen to fragment, and slipped into nihilism and despair ever-so-slowly as she isolated herself. Hiku dove into performing for her dead followers and experimenting ever further with magic, forging her Adornments of Eternal Praise during this time to soothe her constant need for validation. This period didn't spell an end to the old politics and intrigues, but it did lead to generally strange behavior. The height of the mania is generally seen as the Great Debauchment, a massive party where everyone decided to let loose their pent up energy in a 'positive' way rather than talk and cause problems like usual. This is considered the wildest party in the history of the world, as it consumed much of Paradise for several years. It did not, however, fix anything for anyone; in fact, it was an incredibly messy affair that further entangled the personal, the religious, and the political.

The Great Cule

The mania slowly fizzled out, and life returned to normal after about two centuries. It was becoming clear that the Architects weren't returning now or anytime soon, and everyone made peace with that in their own ways. There was a sense that the world was renewed; the Architects weren't there for whatever reason, and everyone had seen each other at their least professional and ideological. It was Lily's invasion of Izekra in 1150, a war of all things, that began the next phase of their relationship. Lily and Ishkibal raged at each other over this, and, unable to strike each other, instead pressed their bodies against each other threateningly. The two had some very weirdly romantically/sexually charged encounters before, during the Debauchment, and the rest of the pantheon joked that their fights were repressed sexual tension. Emesh and Wimbo pushed the two, always half-joking, to try kissing instead of warring - and they eventually gave in. A torrid love affair followed. It didn't end the war, but it did make them less aggressive towards each other in the group, which was considered a more important win by everyone else. After those two became a thing, the joking pressure mounted to resolve every conflict this way. Orchid/Lily, Hiku/Jade, Theia/Ishkibal - it seemed possible to resolve them all in a way that actually talking it out for the millionth time in 1200 years didn't. As these connections formed, Ghavi, the son of the Chimera who had been slowly fading for the last 1200 years, suddenly revitalized himself in a burst of magical and emotional energy - he went from near-perpetual sleep back to almost his old self. It was a moment of revitalized life and possibility. Emesh used this moment to propose a new system of polyamorous divine dating - a polycule that could diffuse political and ideological tension and bring an era of harmony to Paradise. Ishkibal, Lily, Jade, Ghavi, Wimbo, Hiku, and Orchid all were interested, and Agamine and Theia followed shortly after. As for why the polycule was so unanimous, it is important to note the isolation of the pantheon at this point - they had spent so long in this very specific role that they felt completely cut off from the rest of the world, especially the aimless dead. The title of 'God' and the fear of vulnerability (since anyone in heaven could be a spy for the other Gods) also left these people particularly desperate for any kind of connection. The Great Polycule of Heaven was not all it was hoped to be, but neither was it the total failure it is now remembered as. It held together for a long time, and it did allow for moments of peace and mediation that hadn't been seen since the early days - reframing their communication as essential to their romantic happiness and in new terms did encourage them to try once more. Unsurprisingly, the Cule also caused problems. Disputes immediately became deeply personal, factions and sub-relationships undermined the Cule to pursue their own ends, and old grievances were re-interpreted in new spiteful ways. A culture of enforced positivity set in at times, which encouraged further festering of grudges. When things weren't stable and happy, they were explosive and in crisis; even when things looked stable, some dispute was growing somewhere under the surface. The intense vulnerability of the Cule made the intrigue and instability even more painful, and the vengeance more spiteful. And yet they didn't just stay in the Cule, they stayed in the Cule for two hundred years. There were a few reasons why it took so long to collapse: desperation to not be alone, fear that they would be outside of the majority and would be crushed, and eventually the raw inertia of a traditional government institution (but with kissing). There is also the weird self-harm aspect - the Gods were burdened with intense guilt and a numbness one finds in 12-13 centuries of paradise. The pain of toxic intimacy provided both artificial highs and lows that created entertainment and meaning, and allowed them to resolve their guilt-spiralling by making bad self-punishing decisions. Ghavi was the first to leave, long before the others. Technically, he didn't really leave - he was still married to Jade - but he extricated himself from the others and went off to date other heroes and villains in Heaven and Hell. Agamine slowly drifted to the bottom of the pecking order romantically, as he didn't get along that well with most of the rest of the pantheon, but still took the full two centuries to muster the courage to leave. The Polycule died from a thousand cuts: the growing stress of a changing, growing world on people who felt responsible for managing everything in it, in an increasingly untenable system. A series of arguments and fights chained together and simply did not stop. In 1395 the sacred bond between Lily and Ishkibal was broken when Lily tried to actually take Ishkibal's holy city of Kenahai instead of sailing for continental Desmia - their ongoing war had been a constant source of tension-flirting for their whole relationship, but this direct attack was too mean and too political. Ishkibal summoned the council of emotions to try and tell Lily to back off, and argued that Lily was punishing the people of Izekra for problems she had with him. Lily argued for a separation between work and relationships, and that this was just business. The council tried to just sweep it under the rug as usual, but the severity of this crisis was too much this time. It quickly compounded with other issues, as well, as everyone piled on with their own addendums and complaints. The mediations ended in a massive fight, in which Agamine quit the Polycule - and the Pantheon - entirely. Once a Lunar God left, everything started to collapse, and within a year it was over.

The Fallout Era

The collapse of the Cule unleashed a tidal wave of rage, grief, and spite that left almost every relationship in shambles. Only one romance, the Wimbo-Theia relationship, survived, and would limp along for centuries before dying in a toxic puddle; only one friendship, the Wimbo-Emesh friendship, survived the Cule intact, and it remains to this day even though it did break for a century or two. The buildup of tension in the Lunar Pantheon mirrored the buildup of tension on the world below (which helped drive that tension, after all the Lunar Pantheon's moment of chaos spilled back down and set off chaos in the world below. The 1400s ME was a century of global change and chaos, and the Lunar chaos certainly helped that (though it would be wrong to say that the Lunar Fallout was the main cause - some areas weathered the 1400s just fine). All was not discord, though: in the midst of the spite-fighting and cathartic proxy combat, the Pantheon came together for some of its greatest moments of cooperation during this time. The blockade of Suwota and the Exalted Kivishta redirected invasion of the 1400s stand out as stunning projects of Lunar unity. The intense guilt of seeing what they unleashed pushed the Pantheon to innovate a new model of communication and cooperation - one where they were competitors and enemies, rather than friends, co-workers, or lovers. Still, most of those two centuries were spent acting on their worst impulses, as ideology was replaced by vengeance.

The Great Game

Slowly, the flames of vengeance cooled and the Gods returned to ideology once more. Naked competition became the new framework for how the Gods interacted with each other; no more pretenses of cooperation or friendship. The pretense of morality was still there, only now there was cold pragmatism mixed in. In order to adapt to the rapidly growing world and exert power, the Gods also began more fully utilizing Hiku's magical experiments to build themselves living spirit-computers from their follower's decaying minds - now they could retain, analyze, and communicate information at superhuman levels, which is exactly what they needed to answer the number of calls they were receiving. The Gods had already tinkered with this magic before, just under more ethical constraints and safeguards - now it was time to throw ethics to the wind. After a century and a half of this, several Gods called to formalize this competition to keep everything in check and safely non-personal. Jade, Orchid, Emesh, Ishkibal, Lily, and Hiku all agreed initially to gamify the competition into the 'Great Game': they all agreed whoever wins power over the mortal world gets to be in charge and have their ideology recognized as Halcyon's will, and that basically anything goes for accumulating that power. It didn't take long for Wimbo to hop on board; only much later did Theia and Haru begrudgingly agree. This is the era of the present, the era of the Game. It is, at the end of the day, every god for themselves, but there are working teams:

Jade-Orchid-Ishkibal, the three authorities and rule-makers, who fight for their own systems of power that tend to be based on 'rational' hierarchies
Lily-Hiku-Theia, the three preachers and forces of chaos, who fight for their dogma above all
Wimbo-Emesh-Haru, the wild cards; least stable of the teams, as Haru has no investment in the game, Wimbo constantly half-joins the other teams, and Emesh's strategies are unorthodox

None of the teams are devoid of internal fragmentation or intrigue; the Authorities often get fixated on what belongs to whom to the point of infighting, the Preachers have deep ideological differences and can sabotage each other, and the Wildcards are only even a team when the stars align.

Gossip in Paradise

Here are some points of gossip and rivalry between the Lunar Gods. Their beef is eternal and endless, so any DM is always welcome to create new ones as well.

Emesh is generally unpopular among the Lunar Gods, as he is blamed for the Polycule era and resulting fallout. His tendency to steal other culture's gods to impersonate has also given him a reputation as a liar, manipulator, and toxic personality. For the most part only Wimbo and Haru don't openly revile him
Wimbo, on the contrary, is largely considered non-threatening in the Great Game and is on friendly terms with most of the pantheon
Lily and Ishkibal are almost archetypal rivals, making a point of opposing each other as flamboyantly as possible. They also have famous rival-romance tension that historically ends only in mutual suffering
Theia and Wimbo are on shaky terms despite being ideological allies, given their fraught personal relationship. Wimbo tried to 'fix' Theia, and Theia did her best to emotionally harm Wimbo in response
Hiku has infiltrated Lily's inner circle, and Lily has taken on her emissary, Juchi Ika as a mistress. Lily seems to be pretending that she doesn't know who Juchi is, though how many layers down the deception goes, no one knows
Theia and Hiku, despite being close allies in team conflict, quietly hate each other despite openly claiming to be best friends. Theia considers Hiku's soul-twisting magic to be an abomination; Hiku sees Theia as a close-minded, self-destructive liability that must be carefully manipulated to prevent her from causing problems. Hiku has been stoking Theia's rivalries with the other teams to keep her close, and easier to control
Jade and Hiku have an ancient rivalry. Jade blames her for causing the species wars, and is still mad that Hiku tried to ruin her marriage with Ghavi. Hiku, meanwhile, finds Jade's multi-century grudges infuriating and has come to resent Jade's ego and refusal to take responsibility
Jade and Hiku have previously had an intense, toxic relationship
Orchid and Jade are much closer together than either of them is with Ishkibal, causing an imbalance on their team; both of them also hate Theia and her meddling more than Ishkibal does
Orchid considers Hiku to be systemic corruption incarnate, and considers herself extremely wise for labelling Hiku a manipulator. She makes a point of dunking on the Muse whenever possible, and blames her for much divine intrigue
Emesh and Wimbo have a close bond, but one that can become toxic at times like any Divine bond; Emesh can get protective of Wimbo, who he sees as the only innocent among them, and is quick to avenge betrayals for his friend even when that vengeance is not asked for
Emesh particularly resents Theia for undermining his relationship to Wimbo. The two still work together when ideology calls, but Emesh is happy to undermine her when they aren't; he also seems to be aware of the Hiku-Theia situation and has sided with Hiku in some small ways out of spite
Orchid and Emesh have a rivalry as the twin gods of knowledge, and can get extremely competitive
Lily sees Orchid as weak-willed and corruptible, and Orchid sees Lily as a violent demagogue; both would like to 'cure' the other of their flaws, but in the meantime are quite vicious towards in each in their war for dominance
Lily and Orchid have previously had an intense, toxic relationship
Ishkibal openly shit-talks everyone not in his alliance, and often gets in short-term fights with other Gods. He also silently dislikes Jade, who he considers over domineering and excessively loyal to the old Architects, but their conflict is mediated by her husband Ghavi, who Ishkibal likes to have flings with