Aios (eye-ohss)

Æos, The Starmother, The First Light, Overbeing of Light, Healing and Chaos

... Birch started awake, regretting it immediately. Wherever he was, it was spinning to rapidly to identify. He returned his head feebly to his pillow.
"Someone's awake." Following the voice came the nok-nok of shoes on hardwood, echoing in a large room, ending beside his bed. As his eyes focused, a woman in Aiosian clothes emerged from a murky approximation of a bedroom. "Do you have a name?" the nun demanded.
He could only manage a wheeze. He swallowed and tried again. "Birch," he managed to croak.
"To what do we owe the pleasure, Messyr Birch?"
He sighed, searching for the words. "I did something very stupid." The realization came almost at the same time as the words themselves.
"Messyr Birch, we are creatures of chaos," the woman replied stoutly. "That's why forgiveness exists."

Far and away the most commonly-worshipped deity on Waking Materia, Aios—sometimes spelled Æos—is the Overbeing of light, healing, life, creation, divination, demonslaying and chaos. She is known by many epithets, including The Starmother, The Everguiding Light, The Lifegiver and the Apocalypse Slayer. Aios is the head god of the Pantheon of the People, with her churches being the most common source of charity, medicine and soothsaying in most Material settlements. She is generally portrayed as a fierce, protective and spontaneous deity, quick to her sword hand and unparalleled in its wielding.

The Starmother is mirrored but also complimented by the Overbeing of darkness, order and simplicity, Uhrmazd, sometimes called the Voidfather. Most Material religions preach that chaos and order are not in conflict ("a home needs a structure as much as it needs a hearthfire") and as such the two overbeings are usually considered allied in some way. In many cultures, for example, the two overbeings are considered the parents of the primordial gods.

Aios's alignment is Chaotic Good.

Appearance & Heraldry

See also: Aios Image Gallery (External)

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Without a mortal form unlike the ascendant demigods, depictions of Aios can vary substantially. The most common depictions are of a humanoid female bathed in bright whites and golds, sometimes with one or more pairs of feathered wings (which sometimes creates confusion with the Valkyries of Rom, though they are wholly unrelated). Since all colours are rooted in light, she is also sometimes depicted as fully rainbow-coloured, kaleidoscopic or irridescent. In almost all cases, she is shown with a halo of light around her head.

Common across different cultures is the belief she was a warrior goddess who carved the Waking realm out of the hostile chaos of Pandæmonium, so depictions of her fighting hordes shadowy, protean monsters are frequent.

Imagery of the Starmother also seemed to be common in the Solonite church, particularly of her holding an infant Solonn in her arms.

Worship

Our lady is the warmth of daylight, the scattering of shadows,
the bright sword that carved our land
from the thousand-mouthed mire of Pandæmonium
Yea, too much daylight bakes the soil and parches the body
so at times she turns her head and bids us be strong
and, missing her children, she cries tears of rain
But be not dismayed, for we, her children, carry her light
into the most turbulent of everywheres
and the emptiest of nowheres ...

— Invocation of the Baneslayers of Endor

Churches of Aios generally revolve around caring for the sick and homeless, with clerics being more common than paladins. Low-ranking clerics are called Attendants, mid-ranking clerics Mendicants, and high-ranking clerics are named Luminaries.

Paladins are generally called Hospitalers, though certain subgroups take a more aggressive approach to addressing evil, and are often called Baneslayers, Vanquishers or Demon Hunters. The mortal swords take inspiration from Aios's own blade-in-hand approach to the protean, world-eating monstrosities that lurk at the edges of reality.

In Marai, Aios is known as Amaterasu O-Mikami, queen of the celestial palaces of O-Aru and Elder O-Kami of Life. One of two major religions on Marai, aside from the Analects of the Eight-Pointed Soul, is the combined worship of Amaterasu, Aum the Centre Tree, Inari O-Mikami and Reiza O-Mikami. It represents a more spiritual religion, stressing connectedness with the earth & stars, compared to the more modern, socio-philosophical teachings of the Analects.

Though relatively rare, there exist some monotheistic religions on Materia that worship Aios and Umbraas as a single, united god and discourage the worship of "lesser" deities. The largest of these churches is currently the Assertion of Rao, also known as the United Church or the Church of the Pleroma.

Domains

Aios's primary Domain is Light. Her secondary domains are Sun, Healing, Creation, Freedom, Star, Perfection and Kung Fu.

Favoured Weapon

Aios's favoured weapons are the Longsword and Unarmed/Kung Fu. Her Relic longsword is called The Dawn Star. She is Divine Grandmaster of Dawn Celebration style kung fu, though this manifests only in divine inspiration as Aios has never been seen in a fist fight. Nonetheless her supposed son, Solonn, was also said to be a Divine Grandmaster, and has made use of these skills more than once in his mythologies.

Cosmology

Among some obscure scholars and clergy of the gods of knowledge and secrets, Aios is agreed to be a Third Age interpretation of the true, universal deity of chaos known as the Helix. Similarly, her counterpart Uhrmazd is thought to be a Third Age interpretation of The Helix's Lawful counterpart The Tower. She is therefore known as a "Consilient God" in some schools, as the church's divine quintessence is centered more around the consilient worship of Aiosian clergy than The Helix itself.

Lore

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”

― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Lore around the Starmother is immense in volume and varied, though some underlying commonalities have been noted.

As a Creation Deity

Creation stories concerning Aios are generally similar across the continents of Waking Materia, leading some scholars to believe in a shared origin. Most involve her discovering Materia within—or carving it out of—the shifting potentiality of the the Duskscape or Voidspace (some societies do not differentiate between the two). According to the First Age poet Zaffa the Idiot, for example, the ancient Khayyamites believe her to be a nephilim: one of the firstborn beings begat from The Tower and the Helix, cast out of "Heaven" (reference unknown) to wander "Pandæmonium" (presumably Voidspace) before eventually settling on Waking Materia and making her own attempt at Creation, as her parents did before her. In these stories she is generally portrayed as a warrior goddess who must defeat other hostile, primordial beings to make the new home hospitable.

Maraian lore is another example: Amaterasu O-Mikami was warrior queen of the ancient Nikkou, or Bright Ones. The Maraians believe all was once the Duskscape, or O-Inai. For hundreds of millennia the Elder Spirits of Light, Shadow and Dark coexisted in balance, however the Dark Ones came eventually to know greed and paranoia. More centuries passed as the Nikkou were isolated and snuffed out, and in a final act of desperation, the last few Bright Ones granted the entirety of their power to their fiercest warrior, Amaterasu. She defeated four of the greatest Dark Ones in each capital direction, and pressed them into service as the four gatekeepers for the space in between, from which she created the Brightlands, or O-Aru. From O-Aru sprang Material flora and fauna, including the earliest tribes of the Waking Peoples.

Relationship with Uhrmazd

The Maraian narrative continues: Amaterasu would continue to defend the borders of her new home against the forces of Dark and Shadow with the assistance of her four conscripted lieutenants, but though her strength is immense, it is not infinite, and she began to tire over the centuries. The Maraians believe Uhrmazd, whom they call Kagemitsu-O-No-Mikoto, was an Elder Spirit of Darkness who grew to respect her resolve, which gave way to love. He broke with his kin, formulated a peace treaty between the realms and fought all who opposed it, until the Dark Ones relented and signed the treaty. This story is the basis for the treaty that binds the modern Maraian Commonwealth.

The World as Aios's Dream

Some churches maintain the creation of Waking Materia from the primordial Void was not a matter of physical or magical demonslaying. Rather, they maintain the plane exists within the dreaming mind of a sleeping Aios. They acknowledge the Duskscape as yet another dreaming realm, perhaps belonging to Uhrmazd or Overshepherd Rom, with the Veil boundary simply representing the spatial limit of Aios's own dream. This theory is not particularly common in most Material cultures.

Aios-in-Mourning: The Darkest Decade

Some narratives hold that Aios begat a son: the god of warmth, Solonn. This merry god traveled the hills and valleys of newborn Materia, until he met the the Lady of the Mountain and fell hopelessly in love. She agreed to wed him should he defeat her in a duel; The Lady won and, heartbroken, Solonn chose to expire of his wounds rather than continue living.

In folklore in and around the Broken Empire, a new chapter begins here: Aios was so heartbroken by the death of her son that she retreated from the skies of Materia, casting the realm into continual night. Months pass, until a humble (some say fallen) Aiosian harvest priestess by the name Saint Ajora changed the course of Materia’s story. Wordlessly (some say drunkenly), she climbed to the highest plateau in the archipelago, retrieved her flute from her satchel, and began to play. It’s said she ascended as she played, the tune so fine it summoned all the birds on Materia, forming a chorus so beautiful that Aios returned to Materia’s sky to listen, and with her returned the dawn.

There may be some truth to this story: while each season typically only lasts a year or two on Materia, there are consistent and widespread-enough records across the plane of a particularly long winter lasting nearly ten years. Whether a freshly-ascending Aiosian cleric had the power to bring about a new spring is a different matter.

History

“The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos.”

— Hayao Miyazaki

While knowledge of the true, overarching divinities existed within the First Empires, it was suppressed with great prejudice by the ruling Colonial Gods (especially the Kelpeaters), who tolerated no competition when it came to the worship of their subjects. This was, however, slowly eroded by the Insurgent Gods, who brought back worship of the Overbeings across the plane to undermine the Lichlords' divine legitimacy. The Insurgent Archmage Merlinkainen was particularly prolific in this regard: rarely appearing as himself, he instead moonlighted as a traveling priest of both Aios and Uhrmazd, performing many great miracles (some admittedly illusionary) in their name. It is with no small amount of smugness that worshippers of Merlinkainen credit him as the progenitor of the two largest churches on modern Materia.

AIOS

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Godhood
Overbeing

Alignment
CG

Domains
Light, Sun, Healing, Creation, Star, Perfection

Favoured Weapon
Longsword

Relic Weapon
The Dawn Star

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Related Historical Events

• 1153 I.M.
  The Darkest Decade

Profile art: Kazuma Kaneko

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Musical inset: A traditional song about the the Darkest Decade, where Aios hid from the sky in mourning, leaving Waking Materia in perpetual, wintry darkness. Lyrics:

Miri it is while summer y-last
With swete birdsong
Och! Now nichtes windes blast
And weather strong!
Ei, ei! What this nicht is long
And with it does us much wrong
Sorrow and mourne and fast!

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Aios, Waking Material god of light, flux, renewal and more.

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Amaterasu O-Mikami, the Maraian conception of Aios.

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Tarkus of Urnfield, a Baneslayer of Endor, one of the most celebrated leagues of Aiosian paladinry.

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A dual cleric of Aios and Solonn, thought in some religious circles to be her son.

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An Aiosian shrine near Telura, in the Allesans.

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The Heron's Eye was a mortal adherent of Aios prior to his ascension, establishing several of what could be called "Second Generation" Aiosian religions.