Chapter VIII · Religion

Deities

The Celestial Covenant worships all the gods together. A Covenant temple has a shrine for each, and a farmer will pray to Selphail for the harvest, to Esriya for a son at sea and to Odien at a funeral, all in the same week. Aostre and Khareus are the best known in the lands around the Fiend's Chasm, but the Covenant names ten gods in all.

Covenant votaries choose one god as their patron and take two of that god's domains. Wardens serve the Covenant as a whole. The domains and their spells are listed in Flux Domains.

Aostre

[ȯ-strā] · Holy symbol: a rising sun-disk

Aostre is the god of light, dawn and growth. Aostre's followers are taught to protect and nurture, never to attack, and to heal rather than harm. Usmon's Custodians of the Living Light and the monastery at Peltragow are devoted to Aostre, and their halls are full of art and carvings in the god's honor. Aostre's favored are said to call on the god's strength to heal wounds in seconds, raise shields of light and energize their bodies. The teachings warn that one may ask a god for power but never demand it, and that a follower who turns flux into a weapon may find Aostre silent.

Brynghar

[brin-gär] · Holy symbol: two crossed short swords behind a round shield

Brynghar is the god of courage, soldiers and the shield wall: the god of standing your ground when everything says run. The Justicars of Usmon fight with a blade in each hand in Brynghar's honor, and their training yard at Runswick is his holiest ground. Brynghar's teachings value the soldier beside you over glory, and holding the line over winning it. Soldiers on both sides of the War of Souls prayed to him, and his priests learned not to ask whose side he was on.

Esriya

[es-rē-ə] · Holy symbol: a trident wrapped in a knotted rope

Esriya is the goddess of the sea, of voyages and of coming home again. She is fickle: her worshipers say she gives a calm crossing to whoever she likes and a storm to whoever she doesn't, and that the only reliable way to please her is to keep coming back. Fishing villages keep her shrines at the waterline, and since the airship trade began, sky crews have adopted her too. Privateers in the gulf near the Tepor Islands pray to her loudest of all, which the Covenant finds embarrassing.

Itira

[ē-tir-ə] · Holy symbol: an open hand holding a single tear

Itira is the goddess of mercy, sorrow and remembrance. Where Aostre heals the body, Itira tends the grief that outlasts the wound. Her votaries sit with the dying, speak the names of the dead at every anniversary and keep the lists of those lost to war, plague and disaster. Since the War of Souls, her shrines in Ethon and Staerhiel have overflowed with names, and her votaries walk the border towns Gilirak is starving out.

Kendaunt

[ken-dȯnt] · Holy symbol: a warhammer laid across an open book

Kendaunt is the god of law, oaths and judgment. Every oath sworn before the Covenant is sworn in his name, and every court that sits under the Covenant opens with his prayer. The Wardens claim him as their particular patron, and their inquisitors carry his hammer. Merchants pray to him when they seal a contract, and Adryae's Arbitrators keep his symbol over their doors, though they would deny it means anything. Kendaunt's teachings say a broken oath stains the soul's pattern, a belief the ashen, of all people, would agree with.

Khareus

[ˈker-ē-əs] · Holy symbol: an antlered arrowhead

Khareus is the god of hunting and tracking. Khareus is a god of the hunt, not of the affairs of people, so followers shouldn't expect help with matters of law or truth. Still, Khareus grants healing and protection to the faithful, and some say Khareus forgives more readily than other gods. Hunters, trackers and simple fishermen pray to Khareus, and a few ashen still whisper the name, though never aloud.

Nylshyra

[nil-shir-ə] · Holy symbol: a closed eye beneath a crescent

Nylshyra is the goddess of night, dreams and secrets. She keeps watch over sleepers, and since the Dark Sunder that has meant guarding them against the exspiratis, whose favorite way into a host is through a dream. Mothers say her prayer over cradles, and watchmen say it at the start of every night shift. She is also the goddess of things kept hidden, which makes her popular with spies, the Ebony Eye and, very quietly, the Veil. The Covenant tolerates this because it has never managed to stop it.

Odien

[ō-dē-ən] · Holy symbol: a scythe over a still pool

Odien is the god of passage, the keeper of the pool where souls wait between lives. The Covenant teaches that when a person dies, the soul's pattern returns to Odien's pool, loses its memories and keeps its core, and in time is sent back into the world. The Rite of Transition is his, and a soldier given the rite where they fell is said to reach the pool first. Odien is not feared the way death gods are elsewhere. He is the god who promises that dying isn't the end. His votaries are the Covenant's undertakers and keepers of the dead. They are the people most disturbed by the souldriven, and the most certain that something is wrong with how they're made.

Selphail

[sel-fāl] · Holy symbol: a sheaf of grain bound with a hearth-key

Selphail is the goddess of hearth, harvest and community: the goddess of ordinary people getting through the year together. Her shrines are in kitchens and fields rather than great temples, and her festivals are the ones everybody actually attends. The Sullied consider her their own, and the Sovereigni tend to forget she exists. Her votaries run soup kitchens in the poor rings of Staerhiel's cities and keep the starving towns on the Ethon border fed.

Solcharr

[sōl-chär] · Holy symbol: a sun at its height, with a single open eye

Solcharr is the god of the noon sun, of truth and of vigilance. He is Aostre's twin: where Aostre is the soft light of dawn that heals and grows, Solcharr is the hard light of midday that leaves nowhere to hide. The Covenant's Circle of Truth (zone of truth) is spoken in his name, and Warden inquisitors who hunt heretics favor him. His followers believe a lie is a shadow, and that enough light removes it. Some of the Covenant's more uncomfortable secrets suggest his followers don't always look as hard as they say.