Arisilon has thirteen known and accepted gods. Other minor deities come and go from time to time, but the thirteen are essentially all powerful and can be considered the true gods of the world. While mostly served on the continent of Arisilon, they have followings all over the world.
They are all of one pantheon and share a common history. Collectively they are known as the Gods of Peace, however, this is a misnomer as some of them are anything but peaceful. They are simply the Gods of Peace as their predecessors were the Gods of War.
The most commonly known history of the gods is as follows, this being from the teachings as taught by the priests of Yahalla to the common believer. Following that is esoteric version taught within the temples and known to those of advanced studies.
The Layman Version
In the beginning, the All-Father created humanity and a beautiful world on which they could live. He called this world Pyrideon. But man, in his nature to be like the All-Father, sought to create also, and so errantly created foul abominations which combined the base desires of man with the horrid efficiency of machine.
To protect humanity from these demons, the All-Father gave unto humanity 13 gods to protect the world. At first, these 13 gods were benevolent, however they eventually succumbed to the natures of the cities they protected. For those who watched good cities, the gods were good. For those who watched over the wicked cities, the gods became wicked.
And then the gods began to fight amongst themselves, setting mortal against mortal as a way of trying to prove their superiority. In the process, they destroyed the beauty of Pyrideon.
The All-Father stepped in and threw down the 13 gods and replaced them with 13 new gods, the Gods of Peace. While the Gods of Peace still reflected the base natures of their followers, none of the gods went to war with the intent of forcing those who followed other gods to follow them instead.
However, the world of Pyrideon was still wrecked. The old gods still lingered in the outskirts of society waiting for a day to return when humanity might worship them once again and continually caused strife.
The Gods of Peace pleaded to the All-Father for help. For all his might, the All-Father could not undo all that had been done. With dire warnings, he acceded to the Gods of Peace request for a new world. The All-Father then unmade Pyrideon, unmade another world of Nakir, and forged them into the new world of Camoray.
The Esoteric Version
In the far distant past, before this world, before even the first world, mankind lived among the distant stars in an ascended state that was greater than the gods, however this power corrupted his soul to where man forgot what it meant to be alive, where man became a never-ending hunger for power and expansion, resembling little of anything that might be recognizable as human.
A few rebelled and fled, hoping to regain their humanity. These Elders made the first world in which to live, called it Pyrideon, and over this world they created thirteen custodians. Many of the Elders gave up their power and essence to become human again and live simple lives on the world they had created.
The custodians worked with man and sought to protect those of Pyrideon from those left behind in the stars, a threat only known as the Thrage.
It was also at this time that magic came into the world. And when it did, everything changed.
With the advent of magic came new friends and allies from other universes. Elves and dwarves crossed over to also live on Pyrideon. The elves, in particular, had a long history of magic use and began teaching it to an eager for knowledge humanity.
The custodians also studied magic to better fulfill their charge of protecting man from the ever-present threat of those the Elders had fled. Eventually, the custodians came to believe that the only way to really protect man was to fashion him into a perfect weapon capable of defending all of Pyrideon. With magic, it might be possible to not only stand up to the Thrage, but actually defeat them.
To drive this belief, the custodians recast themselves as the gods of man and from on high commanded man toward warlike tendencies. It was a time of terror and destruction where nations fought nations, where single individuals reached powers capable of leveling mountains and boiling seas with but a spoken word.
The gods themselves aligned themselves with various nations and cities. An unintended consequence of taking on the mantle of a god was that the belief of worshippers could mold the outcome of the god. As a god became a deity to a city or nation or a people, that god then started taking on aspects of that city’s or nation’s character. Nations with open ideas of personal freedoms and liberty tended to produce gods which had good tendencies while nations which were oppressive and totalitarian produced gods which we tend to think of as evil.
The mandate of creating the perfect warrior out of man remained for all the gods, a tendency for violence and destruction never left. The idea that sacrificing many to save the whole remained central to all the god’s belief, regardless of other tendencies. These were the Gods of War.
It was this warlike tendency which awoke the Elders, the original builders of Pyrideon. Believing they had made a mistake, they plotted to remove the Gods of War. Realizing the gods were too powerful to eliminate without completely starting over, the Elders determined that the gods could only be replaced. The power the gods had gained from being worshipped for thousands of years couldn’t just be undone by their removal. Something had to be there to take their place.
Sacrificing many of their numbers, the Elders created thirteen new custodians to replace the Gods of War. And almost instantly, thirteen new gods existed where the old gods were no more. These new gods, while similar in nature to the gods they had replaced, had a new mandate. This mandate was still to protect man, but not to protect him by turning him into a soulless killer. The Gods of Peace were born.
Still believing a threat existed, the Gods of Peace created a new plan. Instead of standing to fight, they would just leave. Fleeing their universe, they took Pyrideon to a new universe, one forever sealed away from the threat of the demonic Thrage.
The plan only partially succeeded. In fleeing, Pyrideon appeared where another world already existed. In a cataclysmic event for both worlds, they combined to create the new world of Camory. This is the world we live in today.
In this new world, magic was absent for several centuries. Man survived, but barely, during these troubled years. Once magic started to return, the gods were the first to start regaining their powers and they immediately started to take care of their charges again.
From there, they found that many of their followers hadn’t completely forgotten them. Centuries later, we are still enjoying the bounty of having our gods returned to us. They have never forgotten their primary mission to care for us.
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