The Gods

Aezithis, the first born

God of Stone and the Mantle. Ill-born, without a world core of his own, he formed the crust of Nu around his sleeping mother and rules the Underworld beneath it. His creation is the Thojar, guardians of cliff and cave, whom he shamed and abandoned. The Crimson is his blood, leaking from the crust since his heart was pulled. The histories' Great Betrayer is Aezithis himself: two names in the record, one god.

Zuella and Zaona, the twins

"Perfectly formed and beautiful," the twin sisters became the two moons of Nu. Zuella's face is the Gardens; Zaona's is the Wastes. Each moon is a realm in its own right.

Orton of the Great Ocean, the fourth born

From Orton came the Omari, guardians of the sea, and the Deep Realm is his. His seat is the Sea Tower, and the way to it "was cut off and heavily defended." He "hides from Excalibur in fear," and his own people do not know it.

Irus of the Wild, the fifth born

The Shepherd and the Hunter. From Irus came the Irugaine, "guardians of life itself," and the surface forests are the Realm of Irus. He made them lesser than himself on purpose, so that he would never be short of quarry, and he hunts them still.

Tantis of the Mountain, the sixth born

Tantis "had no children, as nothing he created he ever enjoyed." He is the only god of Nu with no people to his name.

Vaeyar of the Sky, the seventh born

From Vaeyar came the Alverians, who ruled the world in the Silver Age. She made them of "severe intellect and passion" and set them "To watch over the world of Nu. To learn and guide all below." She was not simply betrayed by them. When the stars went dark the High King of Alveria came to her saying he had come to make amends and repair what had been done, and she believed him; she had wept when they first betrayed her and had never been able to bring herself to kill them, whatever they did. She came down to the planet to treat with her children, and they tried to bind her and strip her of her godhood, because they needed a power source the size of the stars and there was nothing else left of that size.

She broke out of it. She became a storm violent enough to change the atmosphere of the world, and she took out of the air the one element her children breathed, knowing exactly what she was doing. The Alverians called it aelathan, and what little Common has for it is the ninth air, or skybreath. There is none of it in the sky now and nothing else on Nu ever needed it. That is why the open air chokes an Alverian, why breached construct flesh "steams and putrefies as it reacts with the air of the material world," and why the surface is survivable at all.

Seventy two of her children are still alive on Nu. They are not extinct and they are not a vanished elder race.

Cults of the realm

On PyreTale a settlement kneels to a power, and the roll of faiths is long. The great cults carry the names of the gods: the Mantled (Aezithis), Sillima and the Hollow and the Two Vigils (the moons), the Order of the Sea Tower and the Brine (Orton), the Long Hunt and the Flock (Irus), the Unbroken Song and the Severed String (Tantis), the Tempest, the Zephi and the Curse of Chivalry (Vaeyar), the Pantheon of all of them, and the Star Father (Hyton). Beside them stand the cults of the void, the Unknown, the Stirring, the Devouring and the Unmended of Dre'Kmar, and twelve Star orders and twelve Void orders of their own, from the Even Hand and the Second Dawn to the Glutted Table and the Sorrow Rooted. Forty-seven faiths in all, each with a creed, a rite, a rival, and a price for neglect.

Not one of the worldly gods can offer a hereafter. Aezithis keeps no realm of the dead, and neither do Orton, Irus or Vaeyar, and the afterlives their cults promise are make-believe. Every soul on Nu goes to the auction of the star gods, which the Constellation Court runs and the Void Princes buy at, and the Court and the Princes are the only powers named above that hold realms of their own. No clergy on the surface teach this and almost none of them know it.