Deities

From left to right: Ondra (depicted as Ngati), Skaen, Woedica, Galawain, Berath, Wael, Rymrgand, Abydon, Magran, and Hylea. Concept art by Matt Hansen. The Deities are entities widely recognized and worshipped across Eora.

Priests choose a deity during Character Creation.

Background
The gods are a group of 11 entities. They exist in a realm known as The Beyond. While they have agreed not to interfere with kith directly, on a few occasions they have reneged on this agreement.

Pantheon

 * Abydon: God of crafting and the forge, and patron of the Knights of the Crucible.
 * Berath: God of cycles, doors and death.
 * Eothas: God of light and redemption.
 * Galawain: God of the hunt in all its forms.
 * Hylea: Goddess of birds and the sky.
 * Magran: Goddess of fire and war.
 * Ondra: Goddess of water and the moon.
 * Rymrgand: God of death, famine, plague, or simple bad luck.
 * Skaen: God of secret hatred, resentment, and violent rebellion.
 * Wael: God of dreams, secrets, mysteries, and revelations.
 * Woedica: Goddess of law, memory, rightful rulership and vengeance.

Worship
People may worship more than one god, but they tend to honor those who are most associated with their way of life. Farmers often worship the gods of light, growth, or storms, while warriors might praise the gods of battle or fortune. For some, this worship is a matter of respect and tradition; they believe their deities to be their creators, and disrespecting them could bring dire consequences. For others, worship is a matter of karmic self-interest. Such individuals hope that their deity will favor them and place their reincarnated soul in the body of someone who will live a good life. For them, choosing not to worship is to risk spiritual confusion, aimlessness in the Beyond, or a place in the lottery of souls, which could result in their next life being worse than their current one. Beyond their primary deities, most people will say a prayer to the appropriate god when the circumstances are right. Farmers will pray to the god of battle when their lands are invaded, and warriors will pray to the god of the hunt when they're starving in the wilderness.

Sometimes, the same god has distinct identities in different parts of the world. For example the god of life and death is called Berath in Aedyran, Cirono in Vailian or Rikuhu in Huana.

Origin
"Better to be on no side at all. Woedica may be the most dangerous of the gods, but make no mistake. Engwith built gods from ideals, and an ideal on its own is a grotesque and vicious thing."

- Iovara ix Ensios

The gods of Eora are not gods in the traditional sense. Rather, they are the artificial creation of Engwith, an ancient society of high minds and broad concerns. In the time of the Engwithans, every civilization worshipped its own gods, which inevitably led to religious warfare. After a series of devastating conflicts, the Engwithans sought an end to it. They devoted all their energy to finding the true Creators. Generation after generation, they analyzed the fabric of the world and unlocked its secrets, mastering the science of the soul and all metaphysical concepts, including taming the Wheel. One day, they found an answer... except the answer was no answer at all. There were no gods to be found, or if there ever were, they were gone. It was a terrible shock to them; if they could discover this on their own, how long until others would? How long before war and chaos reigned over a world without consequence? To prevent this scenario, they used their mastery of the soul to create their own gods to fill the void.

Using a massive adra-powered machine at Sun in Shadow, they extracted the essence of thousands of Engwithans assembled in the chamber - men and women, children and the elderly, all they could find - to empower themselves and become the gods of Eora. Each deity was crafted from an ideal, to give kith not one, but many meanings to choose from in life. They incorporated aspects of gods from existing legends. The exceptions of this process was Skaen, who was a "receptacle" for troublemakers, and Rymrgand, who contains some ancient aspects.

The surviving Engwithans then sent missionaries to the corners of the world to spread their faith. The missionaries knew the secret of their gods' creation, but never revealed it to anyone. They refrained from marrying, voluntarily extinguishing their bloodlines to minimize the risk of exposure.

Iovara ix Ensios
The entire endeavor was almost ruined when Iovara ix Ensios learned the truth, by accident, from careless missionaries discussing the subject openly at one of their temples. Her defiance and determination to expose the gods as fraudulent eventually coalesced into a popular movement that only grew bolder as the Inquisition formed and retaliated against Iovara and her followers, many of whom were former missionaries. The rebellion threatened to destroy the fledgling faith until Thaos ix Arkannon, one of the authors of the divine project, captured Iovara at a city called Ossionus in circa 800 AI. He brought her to the Court of Penitents and tortured her to death, then imprisoned her soul in the adra cells below. She would languish in the prison, preserved only by her extraordinary will, for the next two thousand years, until the Watcher found her in 2823 AI.

Belief in the gods of Engwith spread throughout the world, eventually becoming the one true faith of all kith. Their true nature would be successfully obfuscated by Thaos and his Leaden Key and Wael's Hand Occult.

Titans


"In the age when our steps carved valleys across the face of Eora, our bodies were impervious to all but the strongest attacks."

- Magran

Prior to finishing the machines at Ukaizo that tamed The Wheel, the Engwithans created great artificial bodies of flesh and bone known as titans. The process required an item called a godseed, one of which was discovered in 2828 AI by The Watcher. The massive titans were the physical bodies of the gods and walked Eora in the early days of their godhood.

Abydon's titan
Ondra decided it was necessary to hide the gods secrets by destroying the Eastern Reach and the Deadfire Archipelago.

To destroy the Eastern Reach, Ondra "called down" one of Eora's moons, Ionni Brathr. Although the other gods did not oppose Ondra, Abydon, being devoted to progress, industry and preservation, disagreed with this decision. He forged a mighty hammer that he used to shatter the moon before impact. However, it was not enough to destroy all fragments. In a last attempt to stop the destruction, he absorbed the impact from the largest fragment, which destroyed his titan body and left Abydon himself damaged. Ondra grieved the death, as she loved him. The body has become part of The Abbey of the Fallen Moon.

In the aftermath of the event the gods agreed to abandon their titan bodies. They left them to decay at Mói Gweath in Ukaizo.

Wael's titan
Not all bodies were left at Ukaizo. Of the 11 alcoves that house the titan bodies, three are left empty.

Members of The Circle of Archmagi, aided by The Watcher, discovered Wael's sleeping titan body buried beneath The Black Isles. The Hand Occult occupy the Temple of Revelation atop the body.

The Watcher learned that Wael had hid the body from themselves and forgotten it.

Exile of Woedica
According to her followers, Woedica had once claimed rulership over all the other gods. But, she was cast down in the far distant past. Her crown is depicted as being broken. Among the other gods, she has no real allies, believing that all the gods owe her fealty. However, as the god of resentment and violent rebellion, Skaen sometimes supports her.

Waidwen's Legacy
In a bid to re-empower Woedica, Thaos ix Arkannon restarted several ancient Engwithan machines in The Dyrwood around 2809 AI. The machines diverted the souls intended for new births, causing a crisis of hollowborn children. In 2823 AI, The Watcher killed Thaos and ended the crisis.

Eothas' death and return
"I only wish to destroy the darkness that surrounds the gods, that you may better see us for what we are."

- Eothas

Eothas, who contains aspects of both death and rebirth, is said to love kith the most. He came to the conclusion that the gods needed to step aside to allow kith to succeed (or not) on their own and to expose the gods true nature. He decided he needed to "break the foundations of belief itself, to extinguish the lights that maintain the illusions we have created".

The Saint's War
To expose the truth of the gods origin, Eothas entered the body of a willing farmer from Readceras named Waidwen. Waidwen gained a following and was quickly named the "Divine King" ruler of Readceras. In 2807 AI, Readceras invaded The Dyrwood.

Afraid of what Eothas would do, Magran (after being goaded by Woedica) assisted a group of Magranite priests from Ashfall in creating the Godhammer Bomb. The bomb was used against Waidwen at Halgot Citadel after luring the Readceran unit across the bridge. The explosion destroyed Waidwen and Eothas, although the body was never found.

Return
In 2828 AI, Eothas summoned enough strength to take control of the statue of Maros Nua (located below Caed Nua) in The Dyrwood. The event caused great destruction in the area, killing over 300 people and nearly killing The Watcher.

Eothas then marched across the ocean to the Deadfire Archipelago. Although some of the other gods tried to stop him, he eventually made his way to the lost city of Ukaizo and successfully destroyed the great machine the Engwithans had built to control the flow of the Wheel. In breaking the cycle of rebirth, he believed "it will force all of us to face the truth. We will fail together or move forward together. Either ending is preferable to the cycle we still find ourselves in."