Chapter Two
The Eapheroni divide the gods of the world into two categories, and the children of every region learn the division before they learn to read.
You are not required to be devout. You are required to know the landscape. The pantheon is the landscape. A contractor who cannot tell a Vitra Sunkeeper from a Luminox devotee, or who does not understand why a community's reaction to the word Rhaam tells you something about the community, is a contractor navigating blind. We are not asking you to pray. We are asking you to see clearly.
— Dumphries, Supreme Commander, ExpundeusWorshipped across all six regions without exception.
Gwema is the architect of the current world. At the close of the God Wars she gathered a coalition, offered the remaining gods a bargain, and sealed those who refused in the Broil. The faith that flows back to her keeps the Light burning, the Light keeps the Denied sealed, and the whole arrangement holds together because each of its parts has agreed, more or less, to keep doing what it has been doing for twelve hundred and thirteen years, on the reasonable grounds that nobody has come up with a better idea.
Her church is universal, decentralised, and present in every settlement of any size. Her holy symbol is the most reproduced image in the world. You will see it above temple doors in towns whose names you will never learn. Gwema's Day, the spring festival, is the continent's most universally observed holiday. Old grievances are, by tradition, to be set aside for the day, and by less honoured tradition, to be picked back up the morning after.
Pip is the halflings' god, and through the halflings, everyone's god. The halfling diaspora is so extensive, so old, and so woven into the daily life of the continent that Pip is the only Protector other than Gwema who is meaningfully present everywhere. There is a halfling neighbourhood in Ontstead, in every Brutalan city, in every Salanthe court town, in every Werezetch fortress. There is a Pip shrine in each one.
The holy symbol is a two-headed coin. One side is the halfling face, calm and slightly amused, the face of someone who has been on a long road and is not, at the moment, lost. The other side is the unmarked face: smooth, polished, suggesting the coin's other possible outcome. Pip's theology holds that fortune is what happens at the moment of the coin's landing, and the coin can land either way, and the worship is in the throwing rather than the result.
Two heads, the road's not ours. Two heads, the road's not yours. The coin is in the air. Keep moving. Pip willing, you'll be back. Most likely you will. Travel well.
— A Halfling Innkeeper's Standard Blessing for Departing TravellersStrength, truth, and law, taught together because they are the regional argument.
Brantish does not preside over winning. Brantish presides over arriving at the moment of full effort. Whether you win after that is a separate question. A soldier who wins a fight through luck and sloppy form has not pleased their god. A soldier who loses a fight with perfect discipline has pleased their god more than the lucky winner.
The screaming goat is the holy symbol, and outsiders find it odd, which the Brutalans accept as part of the ordinary background noise of having outsiders. A goat, the explanation usually runs, makes a particular sound when it is at the limit of what its body can give. That moment is the holy thing. The screaming goat is stamped on Gauntlets armour as a quality mark, above doorways in Brutalan training halls, and occasionally on the back of the hand of a soldier who has just been told they failed something and that this is correctable information. The mark is not punishment. It is reminder. The goat is at the limit. Are you?
You are going to fail. You will fail at things you thought you could do. You will fail at things you have done before. The failure is not the problem. The failure is information. What you do with the information is the problem. If you tell me a story about why the failure was not really a failure, you are wasting my time and yours. Brantish is not interested in your stories. Brantish is interested in your work.
— A Gauntlets Sergeant Speaks to a New Recruit, Standard FormA secret is a truth that has not yet been found. Finding it does not destroy it; it reveals what was always there. The Eyeless Owl is the god of the truth that exists whether or not anyone has noticed it, and of the patient work of coming to notice. The owl has no eyes because eyes are not the point. Sight is small and immediate. Knowing is larger.
The Eyesights are the intelligence arm of the Brutalan Imperix, and they worship the Eyeless Owl. They monitor, file, observe, and accumulate. They train their agents to file information whose significance is not yet clear, on the assumption that the significance will become clear later, and that the file will be there when it does. Things the Eyesights know about, they tend to have known about for a long time. Things they have not yet acted on are not necessarily things they have not noticed.
Florus is not the god of mercy. The Brutalans are very specific about this. Mercy is what a person extends to another person in the gap between what the law requires and what the situation seems to deserve, and that gap is, to a Florus theologian, the gap where favouritism creeps in, where the powerful get treated differently from the powerless, where the law stops being the law and starts being a recommendation.
The three heads of the snake have specific meanings: the law as it is written, the law as it is applied in the courtroom, and the law as it is enforced in practice. All three must align, and the Brutalans have built their institutional structure to enforce the alignment.
You write that the outcome was unfair. Perhaps it was. The court did not weigh fairness; the court weighed the law against the facts, and the facts against the law, and produced what the law required. If you believe the law produced the wrong outcome, you have a remedy: petition for the law to be changed. We do not set the law aside for anyone. That is the entire reason we exist.
— A Justicar Replies to a Visitor's ComplaintEach court worships its god through the practice of the court itself. The music is the worship. The painting is the worship. The laid table is the worship.
Chordia is the god of music, and the Salantheans will tell you with some patience that the music is not the point. The making of the music is the point. The performance is what gets seen. The rehearsal is where the worship happens. Chordia's central teaching is that you are not finished. This is meant not as criticism but as orientation. The next rehearsal is always available. To the Court of Song, this is not exhausting. It is the most generous thing a god could offer.
That was good. The third bar was wrong. Specifically, the entry was late, and the recovery in the fourth bar was made of nerve rather than counting. We will go again. I will not tell you the recovery was clever. The recovery was clever. Clever is not the standard. Counting is the standard. Again, please.
— A Court of Song Music Master, Standard Closing of a RehearsalShimmer is the god of elven expression as power, which is the kind of theology Salantheans state without hesitation and outsiders sometimes find slightly alarming. Court of Colors theology holds that power should be visible, that beauty is a form of argument, and that concealing one's nature is a form of weakness. The Court does not understate its position. It would be a theological failure if it did.
The Court of Colors is the most politically powerful of Salanthe's courts. It holds the casting vote in the consensus governance structure. Salanthean delegations to the rest of the continent send representatives whose physical presence is itself part of the negotiation, and the negotiations proceed with the uncomfortable awareness that the Salantheans have already been making a point before the meeting began.
Gellymeth is the easy god to explain. Gellymeth is the god of pleasure. Of having a good time. Of the afternoon when nothing is required of you and you spend it well. Of the meal that is better than it had to be. Pleasure does not require justification. The sprite is not in flight toward something. The sprite is in flight, which is the thing itself.
Welcome. The journey was long. You will be hungry, and you will be tired, and you will need a bath, and we have all of these things ready, in that order or any other order you prefer. The bath is hot. The food is good. The bed is soft. We can talk about why you are here in the morning, or now, or not at all if you would rather not. Tell me what you want. We will see what we can do.
— A Court of Delight Hospitality-Master Greets a New ArrivalOne god per house. The Loremasters remember, the Fingersmiths make, the Bullious sell.
The hearth and the kept record are not separate things. The fire is where the stories are told, and the stories are how everything worth keeping gets kept. Melasticar is the god of both halves of this simultaneously. The fire does not consume what it warms. The fire allows the thing it warms to be seen for what it is. Melasticar's domain is the warmth that makes seeing possible.
The hearth at the centre of every Loremaster hall has not been allowed to go out since the hall was built. A Loremaster hall whose central fire goes out has suffered a loss equivalent to a major archive fire. The Loremasters do not soften the record to suit the present moment. Melasticar would consider that a theological failure.
That is the story as it was. Not as we wish it had been. Not as the children's version tells it. The fire keeps what was kept; the telling keeps it living. If you forget the parts you found uncomfortable, you have not heard the story. You have heard a different one.
— The Standard Closing of a Loremaster Hearthside TellingTakiturni is the god you pray to when you want to know whether your work is good enough, and you are prepared to receive an honest answer. A god of craft who reassures you that your work is fine is not a god of craft. That is a god of feeling-better-about-things. Takiturni is the god who tells you the joint is loose, the angle is wrong, the surface preparation was rushed. The information is a gift. What you do with it is your worship.
The proportions are sound. The joinery is acceptable. The finish is the weakest point; the surface preparation was rushed, and it shows in the third panel where the grain is not quite reading. The decision is yours to make: bring it back when the surface preparation is the standard you would put your name to, or leave it as it stands and accept that it will not be admitted. Takiturni does not punish the choice. Takiturni notices it.
— A Fingersmith's Standard Assessment of a Submitted PieceQuembo is not the god of wealth in the sense of more wealth, please, regardless of how it arrives. Quembo is the god of what things are actually worth: not what people wish they were worth, not what sellers claim they are worth, but the value that emerges from honest exchange between parties who understand what they are trading. The transaction is the holy thing. The wealth is the consequence.
Fair weight. You will receive what was agreed. We will receive what was agreed. The terms are written, and the writing is what we will both refer to if either of us begins to remember the terms differently. Quembo is satisfied. So am I, and I think so are you. The deal is closed.
— A Bullious Standard Closing of a NegotiationReason without knowledge is empty. Knowledge without reason is noise. Either without magical discipline is a mistake waiting to be made.
Ord is the god of what is true whether or not you are around to notice. The stars move according to their own mathematics. A logical argument either holds or it does not. Ord is not a comfortable god, and the Zuzemari acknowledge this without apology. The domain does not have warmth in it. Ord's practitioners are described, with reasonable accuracy, as elitist and pompous, and the Zuzemari accept this characterisation with a specific kind of resignation.
The stars don't negotiate. The proof either holds or it does not. We will know which by the end of the work, and what we want the answer to be is not relevant. Begin.
— The Standard Ord Aphorism, Spoken at the Beginning of Any Serious CalculationKnowledge unshared is knowledge wasted. Knowledge held privately for advantage is, in Arimestor's theology, a form of theft from the future. The crow watches everything and tells everyone what it saw. The crow does not lose what it has seen by telling you. You can give the same fact to a thousand people and still have it. The Zuzemari publish their research, train scholars from outside Rixin, and keep their libraries open on principle rather than only on commercial terms.
The door is open. Tell me what you are looking for. If we have it, you may have it. If we do not have it, I can usually tell you who does. If your question is one we have not thought to ask, I would be glad to hear it. The crow watches. The crow tells. That is how this is done.
— A Zuzemari Welcoming Phrase, Spoken to a Visitor at the Library EntranceZuzem is the god of the magical force itself, considered as a thing that existed before anyone tried to work with it and will continue to exist whether or not anyone is currently working with it. Magic is not a tool the practitioner uses. Magic is the older thing the practitioner is borrowing the use of, and the borrowing is conducted under terms the practitioner did not write and cannot renegotiate.
The nautilus shell's perfect spiral expresses something the Zuzemari hold to be true about the structure of magical force: that it organises itself according to a pattern that predates everyone who has ever worked with it, and that the pattern can be approached with respect and partial understanding, but not with ownership.
Two churches, one relaxed and one emphatically not, sharing a continent in careful arrangement.
Hezzeth is the god who shows up every morning without being asked. The sun chicken is an entirely literal symbol: a plump, round, gold-feathered bird of the type kept on farms across Neranara, which wakes at dawn and announces the fact at volume. The Vitra Sunkeepers, Hezzeth's primary clergy, carry on in much the same spirit. The average Vitra Sunkeeper would rather you came round for soup and a chat about the turning of all things than be drawn into anything as undignified as a doctrinal argument.
Central god of the Luminox, Eapheron's most intense devotional church. The Luminox take a notably different view of the spiritual life from the Vitra, which is to say that the Luminox take a notably different view of nearly everything and would like to discuss it with you at considerable length, ideally before breakfast. Their relationship with their worshippers is more institutional, more demanding, and conducted at a register most of the continent finds, frankly, a bit much. The two churches' coexistence is one of the small, careful arrangements sustained by a tacit understanding that the Vitra will continue not to be provoked and the Luminox will continue not to notice that they are being humoured.
A god of blood and a god of competition. Both taken completely seriously.
Badoom is the god of the connections you cannot escape and would not want to. The spiral-decorated urn holds the ashes of ancestors, and the decoration is the family's continuous record: births, deaths, marriages, significant moments, all added to the urn's surface across generations. In Quroth on the night of Long Night, the specific togetherness of a coastal people who take cold seriously, the urn sits at the centre of the family table. The bond is the warmth. The warmth is what Badoom is for.
Gorg is Quroth's most worshipped god, the god of doing the thing completely. The dung beetle rolls its ball with total commitment to the work, regardless of terrain, regardless of weather, regardless of what other animals think of the project. This is considered theologically precise. Gorg does not care about the outcome. Gorg cares about whether you were entirely in the thing while you were doing it. A Quroth competitor who wins without full engagement has, in the local theology, failed the more important test.
The gods who refused the bargain at the end of the God Wars and were sealed in the Broil. They are real, their worship persists in places, and their names are handled carefully in polite company.
Most of the Denied are not actively remembered outside the regions that once worshipped them. Their names survive in folk story, in the prayers of the very devout who know what they are praying against, and in the silence that falls when someone mentions them in the wrong company. A handful are remembered everywhere, for reasons each of them earned the hard way. Their full entries are in Chapter Two of the Newcomer's Guide.
What you need to know in the field: the Denied are sealed. The Light keeps them sealed. The reason the Silent Sanctuary is the most important place on the continent is that it keeps the Light burning. The rest follows from that, whether the ordinary Eapheroni stop to think about it or not.
The awkward third category. Small, strange, and the Expundeus's standing problem.
The Evaders are the gods who, when the wars ended, slipped quietly under the floorboards and hoped nobody would notice. They are still here: smaller now, scattered, sustained by the odd handful of believers in places sensible people don't go. They are not the Denied. They do not have grand ambitions, the centuries of scheming, or the capacity for sustained organised operations. They are hiding. Most of those encountered are simply trying to survive in the only way available to them: gathering small amounts of faith from a small number of believers, staying out of sight, hoping the Expundeus does not notice them.
Some have become strange in their long isolation. Some are genuinely dangerous. Most are neither particularly malevolent nor particularly powerful. Treat each one on its own terms, as briefed by your handler.
You will not, in your contractor work, be asked to weigh in on theology. You will be asked, often, to read a room, and the room will, more often than not, contain a god in it somewhere. The pantheon is the texture of the continent, and the contractors who do this work well are the ones who notice the texture. We are not asking you to believe anything. We are asking you to see what is there.
— Dumphries, Supreme Commander, Expundeus