Gods of the Empire and the North

Certain philosophers hold that the gods are so far above us that a ruler may leave them out of her calculations. I disagree. Belief is older than any state, harder to predict than any enemy, and it does not send a herald ahead of it.

What follows concerns the gods whose followers Your Grace governs or must deal with. I begin with the two great institutions, then the older gods of the household and the road, and end with the Light, which is the newest and the least understood.

Of the Church and the Temple

Great Raavan comes first. The whole religious order of Singhapura rests upon him, and the Haugris Church holds his remains as the Divine Corpus. The Church teaches that Raavan is dead, that his death scattered his magic across the world, and that the Church is the rightful keeper of what he left behind.

I have one piece of advice here, and I give it as strongly as I can: whatever Your Grace believes or does in private, do not speak heresy against the Church in public. It is one of the great powers of Singhapura, and it has made peace and war in about equal measure. Its favour will serve you. Its indifference will do you no harm. Its anger is slow, and it is very long.

The Temple of Eighteen is the second power. By most counts only a tenth of Singhapura still worships there, but the Temple’s houses stand all across the provinces, and especially at the edges of the Empire. Its adherents spend years training themselves to act according to the nature of one of the Eighteen Litanies, until they resemble that deity closely enough for the Litany to take hold of them.

The Temple keeps its secrets. Much of modern magic comes from its writings and sutras, so it plainly understands how the world works; yet for three centuries it has withdrawn, step by step, from politics. Some Litanies are known by name. The most powerful are hidden.

On paper, the Temples choose a High Priest together to sit at the Emperor’s court. Your Grace should treat this as a polite fiction. No Temple has authority over another. There is no hierarchy, only custom, obligation and shared practice. It has survived its disgrace after the First Ebbing and its ruin after the Withering of Himakatupura on exactly that basis, which is more than can be said for several dynasties.

Of the Baara and the Older Gods

Outside the Church and the Temple there are older gods. Many people make baara, which means bargains or vows, with quieter deities, some of them older than any church. These gods have no priests and no institutions, though some have shrines. The person making the vow promises to do certain things, or to live in a certain way, and in exchange asks the god to intervene in some matter.

When a man does something that his politics, his faith, his character and his friendships cannot explain, it is worth discovering whether he has made a baara.

Ginisundara Devi is commonly worshipped as a minor goddess of the hearth and home, but she is in truth a goddess of fire in every form, and after Raavan she may be the most widely worshipped god there is. Household shrines to her, with a clay lamp and a small offering, are found all over the Empire and especially in the provinces, and women generally keep them. She is said to appear in person to women who are cold and in trouble.

Mahasona’s name means mass grave. In the older accounts he was one of Great Raavan’s generals; the Mahason Chronicle has him ruling the leaderless Yakshas after Raavan’s death. He is now the god of graveyards, slaughter, revenge and punishment. Gravediggers and soldiers smear ash upon their hands in his name, and mothers use him to frighten unruly children. Nobody worships him officially. Half the army does.

Great Yama is worshipped as a protector in Nagenapura, and in the rest of Singhapura as a god of wisdom and survival. Some accounts make him a guard, others an advisor to Raavan, and a few make him Raavan’s teacher, or his predecessor. Soldiers and travellers leave him offerings before a dangerous journey.

Metera Samsina, called Goyamma in the south and sometimes Miyara Devi, is the Mother Who Reaps. She presides over harvests and floods, easy births and deaths, the turning seasons, and the lives of ordinary people, whom she is said to love above all others. She appears as a young girl or an old woman, and stands by at births and deaths. People leave her milk-rice, honey and salt on birthdays and when someone in the house is sick. Your Grace will find very few who omit this, even among those who never speak her name.

Yakadha Hadhawatha, also called Ironheart, is said to have been an Adhiraj whom history has since forgotten. He spent an age pursuing Raavan’s power and let all else decay. The ambitious pray to him, and especially those who want power badly enough to alarm their families.

Galwadu is the Stone-Maker, or Stone-Hand. I believe he came from Ealdorfold, where a similar god called Lapidon rules the deep places under the earth. In Singhapura he is the god of building and of endurance, and so miners, masons, builders, engineers and a good many soldiers pray to him. His sign is carved upon bridges and into the foundations of buildings, and these are treated as shrines. Because the Stonemasons have made him part of the Empire’s building trade, he has more of an organization behind him than most gods.

Ratnamaris rules the oceans, the tides and fortune, and the merchants and sailors of Basnapura are his principal worshippers. On land he appears as a greedy merchant hung with gold and jewels. At sea he is a monster, or a thundercloud. He makes and breaks fortunes, and he is said to prefer the greedy to the generous. Guild merchants across the Empire wear charms bearing his face. I have seen them in Daub.

Of the Light

The Light is the god everyone can see at present, and the one we understand least. We do not know where it came from. The Paladins draw their power from it, and part of the arrangement appears to work like a contract. The Paladins keep poor records, but we do know that a Paladin who ceases to behave like one loses the Light, and that some who behave like Paladins are blessed by it. Whether this happens young or old, nobody has established.

Your Grace knows the recent events, so I will not repeat them. I will add one thing. A Paladin so blessed is compelled to take on quests for some idea of the good, and the Light holds him to it. A Paladin without cunning may find himself bound to an impossible quest, and sent to his death by it.

Of What This Means for Daub

Daub holds the Church, the Temple, the Paladins and every household shrine described above within a single set of walls. On most of them I can advise. Keep the Church’s goodwill and the Temple’s confidence at once, as Singhapura has done for six centuries by favouring neither in public. When a man in Daub behaves inexplicably, ask whether he has made a baara before you ask who has paid him.

On the Light I cannot advise, and I would distrust anyone who claims he can. Your Grace has raised the Paladins as a counterweight to the Church, and it is a sound choice; but nobody, not the Church, not Taprobane, not the Paladins themselves, knows what the Light wants, or why it chose them, or what it will do when a Paladin’s quest and his Duchess’s orders point in different directions. I have spent a good many pages in this treatise telling Your Grace how things work. This is the one power in Daub about which I must simply say that I do not know.

Gods of the Empire and the North

Of the Church and the Temple

Of the Baara and the Older Gods

Of the Light

Of What This Means for Daub

Further Reading