Hundred Former Gods

In the religious tradition of the Eleven Cities, the Hundred Former Gods were a large family of divine entities who ruled the cosmos between the reign of the cosmic father Han and the rise of the gods who were eventually actually worshipped in the cities. They occupy an intermediary position between the amorphous elemental personifications of the initial universe and the individual, anthropomorphic gods of the actual religious tradition.

Narrative

The union between the cosmic father Han and his consort Ketho gave rise to the Hundred Former Gods. These mighty beings created the earth and the waters and set about the process of ordering the cosmos, gouging the courses of rivers and growing mountains in much the same way a human farmer might plough a field and raise crops. In the context of their labours their parents faded from the history of the world.
In the fullness of time the leader of the Hundred Former Gods, Tychos and his consort Kethyas produced five offspring, namely the gods Ajqyod, Dahan, Krezzan, Maryas and Ynglyas. Tychos was afraid his children would usurp him as tyrant of the cosmos, however, and thus invited them to a banquet where he served them plum wine laced with hemlock. Krezzan drank some of this wine and was thus confined to the underworld that his uncle Rhogyen had built for him. The remaining gods angrily refused to drink, prompting a furious argument between Tychos and his two remaining sons Ajqyod and Dahan, during which Tychos seized them by the throat and attempted to kill them. When Ynglyas prophesised that this would be his death, however, he released them, and they escaped to plan a war with their father.
The four new gods gathered allies in the battle against their ancestors. Ajqyod found the dismembered corpse of Zargyod, his cousin via his uncle Sarys and aunt Gheyno, and resurrected the dead god with the aid of Dahan and Yngylas. Meanwhile Maryas flew into the forests in the guise of an owl and found Pergyad among the animals created by her uncle Arkoys. With the aid of these allies the gods eventually prevailed over their ancestors, killing many of them; Tychos was eventually killed by Pergyad after he had severely wounded Ajqyod, Dahan and Maryas, and Krezzan was restored partially to life.
The battles between the two generations of gods included numerous tales about the other offspring of the Hundred Former Gods, which are typically depicted as horrendous monsters for the younger gods themselves to fight. The tale of Ajqyod and Horphyod is a case in point.

Literary/artistic tradition

The canonical version of the myth of the Hundred Former Gods is given in The Spring of Many Waters by Jalens of the South. Jalens names only eight of these beings, however. Various other members of the Hundred Former Gods are mentioned in other sources but no canonical list of them actually exists.
Though Jalens makes no mention of this in his poetry the pre-Wesmodian artistic tradition depicts the Hundred Former Gods as being physically partly anthropomorphic and partly drawn from the natural or animal worlds. Gheyno, for example, is often depicted with fins on her neck and hips and fanged fishlike mouths instead of hands, while Rhogyen is shown as a masculine figure carved roughly out of rock.

Commentary

From a post-Wesmodian perspective, the Hundred Former Gods can be read in formalistic terms as personifications of the chaotic natural world, over which their anthropomorphic successors achieve dominance. The tradition can therefore be seen as an etiological explanation for the dominance of the eight gods worshipped in the Eleven Cities.
Thaumatologists, however, tend reject this reading as overly allegorical. The existence of stories of broadly attested historical individuals such as Morogyad encountering monsters such as Qotrophay might be seen as evidence that the parents of such creatures might well have existed. Given that thaumatology is essentially the practice of experimenting with potential scenarios about how and why the universe came to be the way it is, therefore, the myth is of abiding interest to researchers in the fiield.