The Gods Of Theros

Quests

A mortal champion is a vessel of divine power and an agent of divine will. A champion’s role is to act as the god’s eyes and hands, upholding the deity’s ideals and shaping the world to conform to those ideals.
In return for the gods’ divine blessings, champions are expected to do the god’s bidding. The quests in each god’s section throughout this chapter provide examples of tasks the gods might assign to their champions.
Completing a Quest. When a champion undertakes a quest on a god’s behalf, the champion can expect a reward for doing so. As long as the champion is actively pursuing the quest and upholding the god’s ideals along the way, you can increase the character’s piety score, using the general rule of raising it by 1 every session. Upon completing a quest bestowed by the god, the character might earn a blessing as well as a piety score increase.
Declining a Quest. The cost to a champion for refusing to accept a god’s quest can be steep. Sometimes, a champion can safely put the task on hold for a time, such as when helping another champion complete a quest for a different god. As long as undertaking the quest isn’t a matter of urgency, gods usually don’t punish champions who procrastinate. But if a champion willfully ignores a god’s quest or pursues opposite aims, they might suffer any of the following consequences: The character’s piety score might decrease by 1 each day, or each play session, for as long as the character continues to refuse the quest. The god might intervene to steer the champion toward the quest: Thassa could cause a storm to blow the character’s ship off course, for example, bringing the champion to where the god wants them to be. In extreme instances, the god might place a magical command on the character, similar to a geas spell.

Divine Assistance

The gods are fond of meddling in mortal affairs, and heroes sometimes call on their gods for aid in times of desperate need. Spells such as divination and commune give characters the opportunity to ask their gods for information, and clerics who beseech their gods for assistance sometimes receive miracles in answer. Heroes also have the opportunity to ask the gods for favors, after proving their worth by enduring a divine ordeal. At other times, the gods take the initiative to reach out to mortal heroes, sending them on quests or meddling in their adventures. Dreams, omens, and emissaries are the most common means by which gods might make their wishes known.
Omens When the lynx-constellation paces restlessly in the night sky, it is an omen that Nylea is worried. When the tides rise high in defiance of the natural cycle, that is an omen that Thassa is distressed. When rain falls on a sunny day, Keranos and Heliod must be in conversation. Through supernatural events such as these, evidence of the gods’ presence and influence is demonstrated, metaphorically manifesting their divine wishes.
Weal and Woe. The gods usually send omens as either warnings or as signs of their favor. The response to the augury spell takes the form of an omen foretelling weal or woe, and the gods might use omens in the same way, even without being asked to provide a sign. When a divine champion sets out on a course of action, a god might express approval or disapproval, hoping to either encourage or dissuade the mortal.
Communication Communication between the mortal world and the divine can take a variety of forms, from omens that get mortals’ attention by distorting natural phenomena to face-to-face conversations between a mortal and the manifestation of a god.

Divine Relationships

The pantheon of Theros is a family—a large, often dysfunctional family riven with petty jealousies and rivalries but also held together by genuine affection, admiration, and cooperation. It is easiest, after all, for mortals to conceive of gods that are very much like themselves, and the gods of Theros are very humanlike in their foibles and their exploits.
The pantheon of Theros has expanded through four generations of divine evolution. Some tales describe these as actual generations, suggesting (for example) that the storm god, Keranos, is the literal son of Thassa, god of the sea, and Purphoros, god of the forge. Others describe the generations in metaphorical terms, suggesting that Keranos represents the combination of Purphoros’s creative energy and Thassa’s deep knowledge, resulting in lightning-like flashes of inspiration (as well as the fury of a physical storm). In all their various forms, though, the myths agree on the basic structure of the pantheon’s development.
The time of the first generation precedes the presence of what are commonly understood to be “gods.” Before mortals dreamed the gods into being, before they could even imagine beings as noble as the gods, the malleable dream-substance of Nyx gave shape to their fears in the form of the titans.
The titans were beings of utter chaos, representing everything that stands against order in the mortal world, never worshiped but sometimes appeased. Myths recount how the gods battled and imprisoned the titans, sealing them in a prison beneath the Underworld. Now the titans are all but forgotten in mortal imagination. Scant mention of their names and epithets appears in the oldest tales, hinting at the nightmares that birthed them. Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger, embodied the terror of death—and its insatiable gluttony for new creatures to consume. Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, might be seen as a direct predecessor of Keranos and Thassa, but it was the incarnation of natural disaster, having none of the creativity and thoughtfulness of those gods. Phlage, Titan of Burning Wind, was an all-consuming whirlwind of fire, and Skotha, Titan of Eternal Dark, was the utter darkness of the starless night.
The oldest of the gods, often imagined as siblings or as some kind of offshoot of the titans, are Kruphix and Klothys. The origin of this second divine generation is mysterious. Perhaps Klothys arose from a sense of inevitability, a notion that the world was unfolding as it must, and thus the actions of mortals made little difference. Kruphix might have been born from a sense of mystery, supporting the idea that the workings of the universe are simply incomprehensible to mortal minds. It’s also possible that Kruphix and Klothys are a different order of beings from either the titans or the other gods, and Klothys at least has existed for unknown ages despite being all but forgotten among mortal folk.
Once mortals could imagine a world beyond the horizon and a course of destiny that left behind the trials of life, they could formulate the notions of principles, order, and natural law. Out of those ideas, the third generation of deities was born: sun-crowned Heliod, deep-dwelling Thassa, bleak-hearted Erebos, bronze-blooded Purphoros, and keen-eyed Nylea. These gods are known to refer to each other as “brother” and “sister,” though they never speak of parents and almost certainly don’t imagine Kruphix and Klothys in that role.
The other eight deities, the fourth generation, represent the application of abstract principles to the reality of mortal life. For example, while Heliod stands for universal moral precepts, Ephara is the god of laws, the rules and structures that govern mortal societies. Nylea is the god of wild nature, predatory animals, and the change of seasons, and at the same time Karametra is the god of nature tamed for human use—agriculture and domestication—and of the natural cycles involved in human life, especially childbirth.
These gods recognize the previous generation as their elders but only occasionally as parents. Iroas and Mogis are widely considered to be brothers, but few myths describe their parentage, and those that do contradict each other—in keeping with the nature of these eternally warring gods.

Myths and Deeds

Countless tales tell the history, deeds, and nature of the gods. Sometimes these stories play out among the constellations in the night sky. They are chanted in hymns during the gods’ festivals, inscribed in temple walls, told around campfires and hearths, and collected on scrolls. Some are simple fables meant to illustrate a single facet of a god’s character or of moral behavior. Others are monumental epics, most notably The Cosmogony, a poem by an unnamed Meletian sage that includes several (sometimes conflicting) tales of the creation of the world and beyond.
The people of Theros don’t balk at contradictory myths. Is Keranos the literal child of Thassa and Purphoros? Did he spring unbidden from Thassa’s heart when her rage grew too great for her to control? Or did he come into being when Purphoros tried to steal the secrets of Kruphix? To the people of Theros, it doesn’t matter whether these tales describe historical facts, and each of them is true in its own way. Each tale about Keranos expresses a truth about the god, about inspiration and storms and secrets. Studying each one can lead Keranos’s worshipers to a deeper understanding of and a closer relationship with their god.
Various writings, usually organized around a central theme, collect myths about the gods. The Origin of Monsters is one such collection, notable as an attempt to find commonality in a number of different tales about the birth of dragons. It also describes how Pharika hid secrets in the blood of basilisks, how the spirits of great warriors are reincarnated in the form of manticores, and dozens of other tales.
The epic poem called The Theriad is another such collection. It describes the exploits of various champions of Heliod, all of whom are simply called “the Champion,” as if they were a single individual. Because the identities of the heroes aren’t mentioned, the tales have more to say about the character of Heliod than about any champion’s mortal deeds.
The Callapheia, by contrast, is about the exploits of a single mortal hero, Callaphe the Mariner, who snuck into Mount Velus and stole Purphoros’s tears, hid behind Phenax and wrote down his secrets, and raced Thassa at the edge of the world before sailing into Nyx. Tales of this sort highlight the gods’ pettiness and vanity and promote the somewhat blasphemous notion that a mere mortal can outwit the divine. The Callapheia also serves as something of a gazetteer of Theros, describing its various lands and their inhabitants, at least as they existed some centuries ago.
Finally, the deeds of the gods are sung in paeans during their festivals. Naturally, these hymns portray the gods in the most favorable light, as benevolent (or at least indifferent) and all-powerful.

Worship

The idea of the existence of gods, as it grew in popularity among the mortals of Theros, didn’t bring the gods into being by itself. Mortal reverence and worship turned universal ideas into deities. It wasn’t until mortals trusted the gods to act on their behalf, in response to sacrifices and prayers, that the gods took shape from the dream-substance of Nyx. Worship remains crucial to the power of the gods, though mortals are generally not aware of their influence. Were a god to cease being worshiped, their might would dwindle.
The most prevalent form of expressing reverence is the practice of libation, pouring out a splash of wine or water in honor of the gods. Pious people perform a simple rite of prayer and libation every morning and evening at a household altar or hearth, while the less devoted might still pour out a splash of wine before drinking the rest.
The defining feature of a Theran temple is a statue of a god—which the actual god can occupy and animate at any time. Worshipers kneel before it, touch and kiss it, drape it in garlands and fine cloth, and leave offerings before it. These acts are sometimes spontaneous outpourings of love or gratitude, and sometimes petitions, imploring the god to cure an illness, send rain for crops, guarantee a safe journey, or perform any other favor related to the god’s sphere of influence.
Most people aren’t devoted to a single god, though many prefer some gods over others. Someone might ask Pharika to spare a loved one from disease, then later offer prayers to Karametra for a bountiful harvest or to Thassa for safety on a sea journey.
Clerics and Champions It’s far more common for a hero to be devoted to an individual god than it is for an ordinary mortal. A cleric almost always worships a single god of the pantheon and chooses a domain appropriate to that deity for their Divine Domain feature.
Often, heroes choose to devote themselves to particular gods either out of piety or self-interest. Sometimes, though, the gods choose champions who might not be entirely willing. Heliod, for example, takes pride in selecting only the best mortals to be his champions. He doesn’t care how the mortals feel about being chosen, and his demands won’t be refused.