Deities (Tirr Supplement)
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The group of entities known as deities in the World of Tirr fulfill a broad swath of shapes and interests, using semi-primordial power to influence the universe around them with regards to their whims. Most knowledge beyond that of general appearance, ideals, and other surface traits are hidden from the mortal races of Tirr, with even few of the elder races knowing little of the true nature of the gods.
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[edit] A Brief Explanation of the Gods
Unlike the mortals of the planes later developed by the deities from the roost of the Deific Sphere, deities do not have the same type of "free will" that subsequent races possess, in so far as that can be interpreted as being able to make conscious choices regarding one's moral, rational, and logical actions, including and not limited to deviation. While this is not typical of knowledge that any mortal possesses, deities are formed wholly from Ideals. These are often thought of as parameters engineered by mortal understanding to judge the world experienced around itself, but in reality were the first great results of the universe that became from what is known to gods as the First Era; The mysterious time when the universe formed the first sphere, known as the Deific Sphere. Ideals are, in some ways, completely undetectable energies that seem to flow freely through both matter and energy, alike, somehow interacting with all things and directly influencing nothing. They are, essentially, amorphous wills without any known progenitor, and they are particular attuned to the characteristics of living organisms, with no recorded observations. The only entity ever having seen or experienced the First Era, with the ability to study the phenomena of Ideals is Fate, via the Stream of Time, though she never speaks in-depth of the event, and never at all without adequate reason.
Deities such as Fate first came to life as the qualities of Ideals began to collide with two other by-products of the First Era: The Blood of Creation and The Light. The Blood is little more than a powerful catalytic body of mass in the form of lighter than air particulates, often accumulating in the form of quasi-solid, amorphous masses. It contains the notable ability to, with proper application of other energy, become any element in the universe of Tirr, physically speaking, and every element can be traced back to it, in the records of the gods. The Light, sometimes poetically referred to as some possible overarching sentience by pantheon deities, is a mysterious, brilliant mass of power created by unknown forces prior to the First Era. Within it's formless radiance, it exhibited the qualities of extreme, rapid evolution in all matter within it's light, living and non-living. Large portions of the Blood became bathed in the radiance of the Light, and as a result, began to quiver in the first signs of life in the vacant, newly-formed universe. As it did so, Ideals from far and wide began to converge on what became the first life-forms to exist in the World of Tirr, entirely devoted to the Ideals that they were comprised of.
Merging with the rapidly developing forms of life, certain Ideals conflicted with others, while others were incompatible with some, forcing Ideals to diverge and settle against one another, before tearing away from each other violently, eventually sectioning the Blood into thousands of individual colonies of Ideals, still bathing in the power of the Light. From these colonies eventually became what is known as the Gods, beings which, albeit far less now, still populate the world of Tirr, to the present.
As the gods began to walk the limitless world around them, it would be many eons of Evolution, Creation, and Sophistication before they became the intelligent beings known in the present and experienced the great war against Akulakhan; The event which caused the decision which sealed away the Light and the Blood from all but a few, and the Genesis Oath was formed: An oath which bound the very beings of all entities who made it's pledge, through ritualistic, divine magics, to its terms. The oath was the single most divisive conflict in the history of all the Gods' existence, even parting former comrades against Akulakhan over its necessity; Some even argued that the oath, which was presented in order to never allow another deific war to occur, was similar to the tyranny Akulakhan sought to impose over the gods.
The schism that results yielded only one result: Banishment, as an alternative to an even more disastrous, factional war, to the lower spheres of all who refused to comply. While the lower spheres were created by the gods before the war with Akulakhan, as the basis of constructive efforts, a specially created sphere, now known as the Material Sphere was created specifically to imprison the essence of Akulakhan, and was the destination of all who refused the oath; essentially branding them with the same level of punishment as the hated enemy of all, though with their essences intact, unlike the Mad God. To make things worse, the Material Sphere was shielded from the Deific Sphere for the most part, with little influence from the Blood, Light, and Ideals so prevalent in the Deific Sphere... the source of life and power for the deities. While the Ideals were all that was necessary to keep deities infused with the divine influence, and the Blood allowed those Ideals to take form as deities, the Light was needed to infuse the Blood with life, and to bestow power.
Because the Blood and Light had been hidden away, and sealed in an upper plane of the Deific Sphere to prevent misuse, the Ideals were all that could flood the whole of the Deific Sphere, entirely, and the Material Plane further dammed the flow of the three primordial powers, having little Blood, no Light, and moderate levels of Ideals. This, along with the energies of the banished gods and Akulakhan, resulted in the life that now populates the Material Plane: Mortals.
It was not long before the Gods lost one of the treasures of the First Era to the Material Sphere. Prometheus, pitying the mortals and the Aesir of whom had been cast out, believed that should the Gods ever become dissatisfied with the effective prison of the lesser Sphere, they could simply destroy it. In an effort to force that situation to never occur, and to allow respectable Mortals to stand firm against any oppressive Gods, Pantheon or Aesir, Prometheus did the unthinkable: He stole the Light. Carrying it away to the Material Plane quickly, as the other Gods soon caught wind of his actions, he violated the Genesis Oath, allowing him only a brief period of time before he was erased from existence via scattering of his primordial essences, to construct a small, hidden shrine to house, and defend the Light from all but the noblest of mortals.
The Oath prevented the Gods from directly affecting the Lesser Planes, for fear that their presence may allow the more violent of the Aesir, or even Akulakhan, whom had been divided, similarly to Prometheus, to somehow return to full form through interference. This forced the Gods to reconcile the Light was lost to them, leaving the World of Tirr with its final collection of deities, never to gain any more until the three forces are united again.
[edit] The Deities
Thus far, three categories of deities exist in Tirr, each containing a limited but varied number of entities that exist, or at least, are notable in the history of Tirr and the events shaping it. The Pantheon is the governed order of deities who still reside in the lower levels of the Deific Sphere, The Aesir who were banished to the Material Sphere following the Oath, and the Fallen, who no longer exist in detectable form, though are notable, and have followings among mortals.
