Vossos
The Voice of the End; Final Arbiter of Breath
With the death of Malephesh, the Elemental god’s vise-like grip over the souls of Sur’Dhanza was shattered. As the last of his divine energy scattered to the four winds, the land’s first gods began to ascend. Among these was a spirit; a dour being known as Vossos. He looked upon the land beneath him - the desolate sands of the deserts of Sur’Dhanza - with disdain. Its people were vagabonds and wanderers, unfit for true worship and in need of solid direction. To this end, he took on the mantle of the god of Darkness, Order, Death, and Finality and set about making his name known to the Kiarren below.
Divine Domains
As one of the earliest beings to safely ascend to divinity in the southern hemisphere after Malephesh's death, Vossos was able to claim a number of broad domains in order to assert his dominance over the land. Silence, Endings, and the Natural Order are his terms for what amounts to being a god of death and authority. It is through his influence that beings ascend to power, and into his fold they fall when their time is up.
In addition to these primary domains, Vossos also claimed the Night Sky as his. Although there is very little he can do with it, not actually having the power to touch the stars and planets in the void of impossibly distant space, he took it upon himself as a mantle and a sign. He often encourages his subjects to study what they can of the heavens, just so long as they frequently remind himself that they are looking at an aspect of their god.
Divine Symbols & Sigils
Leadership within Vossos’ holy city of Sharast is determined by the Nguzo ya Thamani - literally the ‘Column of Worth/Value’. This Marked pillar - created somewhat by accident in Vossos' early days of divinity, when Sharast was still new and seeking guidance - holds aloft a small, bronze medallion. While initially blank, this medallion must be taken and held by any prospective holder of a position of significant authority. Should the pillar deem them worthy of the position they seek, symbols representing that position will be emblazoned upon it, and a new medallion will take its place upon the column in preparation for the next aspiring leader. Should they be unworthy, the medallion will simply shatter, eventually crumbling into dust. This latter element remains with the medallion even after an individual has initially been deemed worthy and taken up their new role, as corruption may easily tarnish the merit it once saw in them. Because of this, officials are expected to display their medallions at all times while on the job, to prove to all who see them that they remain worthy of the position they hold.
Vossos has always assumed that the Nguzo represents his ideals in its selections, proclaiming only those who uphold his love of order and authority to be worthy of medallions. This is only partially true, however. In a somewhat ironic twist, it represents the ideals he held at the time when the pillar was created. At that time, Vossos himself had not been quite so consumed with his own power, seeing himself more as a steward to a struggling people than their omnipotent lord and master. Had he taken up one of those tokens himself in those early days, he might not like the state it would be in today...
Tenets of Faith
Though Vossos' list of rules and regulations and stipulations on reveling in his glory and might are numerous, many of them are overlooked from time to time without much in the way of punishment or recompense. When it comes down to it, most of his less zealous followers can boil his teachings and creeds down to three major elements:
- Vossos instills a great deal of respect for stillness, darkness, and silence in his worshipers, and nowhere is this more evident than in the holy services held every ten days by members of his church. In these somber gatherings, performed wherever a priest might find themselves - though most often within specially-prepared chambers within temples devoted to their beloved Final Arbiter - a priest can always be found sitting in total darkness, surrounded by acolytes and the local congregation, reading excerpts from Vossos’ holy texts. These protracted sermons can often last for upwards of five hours, with the priests stretching single words over several full minutes, reducing everything down to a low, monotonous hum. While attendance is not strictly mandatory, it's expected to be present for one at least once every few weeks. Disturbing the droning song in any way is considered a minor act of blasphemy, but priests are expected to use their better judgement as to what actually deserves retribution. Falling asleep - or gods help you, snoring - will bring a fiery wrath down like nothing else.
- The bodies of the deceased are expected to be treated with a great deal of care by Vossos’ followers, for obvious reasons. When a body can be recovered - and great pains must be taken to ‘repay the Lord for what was lost’ if it cannot be recovered - it is carefully cleaned and prepared in oils and incense, all in the deepest darkness possible. Once these rites are completed, the body will be moved the following night to the nearest hallowed burial site, where it will be interred in a stone sarcophagus and buried deep in the bedrock many meters below the sands of the desert. In the incredibly rare circumstances that someone is buried outside of the deserts of Sur’Dhanza where Vossos is most frequently worshiped, a shallower grave is permitted, so long as it is properly sealed in stone. In either case, the ordeal must be completed before sunrise, as it is said that Vossos’ psychopomps are blinded by the light of day, and the spirit of the deceased risks a great deal by delaying their passing through the veil.
- As a proponent of darkness and silence, it should go without saying that the Voice of the End considers undue frivolity and disturbing of the peace to be sins against his name. What many outsiders consider strange, however, are the things he considers virtuous. Even as he lords over his population as a narcissistic despot - a position he carefully enforces by way of his holy scriptures applauding the respectful observation of authority at all times - his holy works take great pains to instill a love of charity in his faithful. The homeless are sheltered, the hungry are fed, the destitute are given donations from the church’s own coffers; On the surface, it seems like a much softer, kinder side of the Void. Sadly, its true purpose is likely just a more subtle means of control. After all, the unfulfilled of the world can quickly become restless, or through their wants, can drive those who witness them into action in their stead. This sort of instability can lead to revolts or, more insidiously, questions. Such things cannot be abided in Vossos’ system, as they would only serve to undermine his all-but-total authority over the centralized Kiarren people. The rich in life are assuaged with promises of rewards for their goodwill in death, while the unfortunates are provided with all they might ever cry for. And so, like cattle, the people are silenced.
Divine Goals & Aspirations
Vossos desires much the same as any other despot: power. Though he is restrained by the various rules that keep the gods divided into their territories and domains, he constantly seeks to spread his insidious grip on the people of Sharast as far as it will possibly go. His religion has converted regions of his worship into a de facto surveillance state, where if he himself isn't keeping a careful eye on the actions of the populace, his devout priests most certainly are.
Nearly all of the ruling class of Sharast ascribe to the dark god's religious tenets, and a number of them are even members of The Servants of Darkness, his inner circle of true believers, who he frequently directs to root out civil unrest and expel it from their midst. This leads to much disdain for him and his people beyond the borders of Sharast, but dissidents can easily be painted as jealous or spiteful, and so pose less of a threat to his grip on the city than internal factors might.
Physical Description
Body Features
To living mortals - and gods who don’t bother to put forth the effort to dispel his illusions - Vossos appears as a humanoid swath of jet-black sky, peppered with stars, nebulae, and the odd comet. The images portrayed in this visage are not a match to any portion of the sky that is known to the people of Sur’Dhanza, though strangers from the north have noted that the arrangements in his form, while not a direct match to any modern star charts, seem strangely familiar.
To those sequestered within The Reckoning Isle, his fraction of the afterlife, however, Vossos is a strange beast indeed. A tall, gaunt, humanoid figure, he appears to be a mummified corpse, wrapped tightly in bandages over which drape flowing, ceremonial robes of some culture alien to the Kiarren who most often find themselves in his veil-bound domain. His raiment is littered with jewels that roughly match up to the stars in his more divine guise, but his face is unmistakably the sunken, staring visage of the long-since deceased. Vossos has taken great pains to expunge absolutely everything he can about his past, however, to the point that even other gods have been unable to to determine where he came from or how he ended up an Ascended being over the sands of Sur’Dhanza.
Vossos rarely deigns to take on a mortal disguise, preferring to deal with the world indirectly through loyal agents, but in those instances where it cannot be avoided, he will invariably seek to appear as regal and important as possible. Whether it be through excessive finery or through facial features generally seen in nobility, he seeks to make it clear to all observers that he is the most important person in the room, even if his true divinity has to remain hidden.
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