Monday Mythology: Water
After trying a number of ways to breakdown the Pantheon into families, especially given that many of the gods are spontaneous creations that aren’t tied to a given bloodline, I think that moving in that direction is an error. While I figure out how to explain how I wish to convey the elemental strength of the gods in a manner that isn’t familial, I’m going to move over to a second primal god and her direct surviving progeny: Nera, Oranna and Amaraan
Nera, Goddess of Water
All of the personalities of the Primal Gods are very strong, though each embodies a different definition of strength. While Takannas embodies the strengths of force, Nera embodies the strength of adaptability. She is clever, alert and flexible, taking advantage of her opponents flaws and using her abilities to their greatest capacity. While some would call her fickle, she follows a very strict set of internal rules, and those that defy them quickly feel her ire. If one simply obeys the precepts Nera follows, there will be no conflict. When it is her turn to lead the legions of the Paltonarchs, when Water Ascends and the Iron Marches is hers to command, it is a regimented and flawless army she leads to battle, bringing all her tactical brilliance and precise timing to bear on the enemies weakest positions. Her standing among the Paltonarchs is unblemished and untarnished through the ages, a peerless paragon of law, order and leadership.
Nera is of the Primal Gods, the four of whom were created by Sae-Oon when he brought order to Chaos. She has remained a steadfast pillar of Order and Law since even that time, restraining Takannas and encouraging Evalrun in equal order. She kept herself distant from the others as a whole during the times before the Godwar, it is a mystery to all the other gods how she became pregnant not once, but twice during that time.
Her first, and in her eyes, greatest child, is Oranna. Through Divestiture, she was given domain over laws and order, and she lived with her mother in a palace under the great oceans made of coral, bone and water-smoothed stone. Nera became pregnant a second time, and this time was much worse. What happened to her under the water, when it came time to birth her child, not even Oranna is privy too, but she emerged with Amaraan, god of Grief. As Nera’s portfolio never consisted of anything close to grief, many have speculated that the divestiture was from Retren, or perhaps even Telaxus.
Nera emerged from that second birth stronger than she once was, and also colder. When she heard of the betrayal of the young gods, and of Amaraans choice to side with the rebels, she is said to have said “He is the Harbinger of Grief, how could he have chosen anything else.” Though he was her own flesh and blood, she holds him no hostility, and is even familiar with him when they meet on the battlefield, including throughout the years of the Godswar previous to the Black Pact.
Now, though, she advises the gods of a stong, long campaign in order to win the war. While the Accursed are powerful, they are fewer, and may be outlasted. Keep up the pressure, out maneuver them, and fight on fields of your choosing, and you will inevitably succeed at your task. Though Evalrun and Conadral generally heed her council, it is inevitably Takannas that breaks ranks and leads, during the long fire ascendance back and forth campaigns of strong gains followed by great losses.
Nera, at her core, cannot stand Takannas, embodying all she finds wrong with the cosmos and the universe. Though he has good intentions she can’t help but see the consistent tactical errors he has made have lead to loss after loss that her and the other three Primal Gods have to clean up after. All that said, she is on fantastic terms with the other two Primal Gods, and many of the more calmer, rational Paltonarchs as well.
Oranna, Goddess of Laws
Where her mother is an enjoyable and pleasant being to have around, her daughter is not. Oranna is known for her cold temperament and her inability to even have the most strained of smiles. Instead, her insistence on rigid formality, strict hierarchy and perfect etiquette have made her an unwanted guest at many events. She internally seethes at these opinions, and simply cannot understand how speaking, acting and presenting oneself in the proper and expected manner is not encouraged.
Born at the bottom of the ocean to Nera and an unknown suitor and divested into the rule of Law and Order, Oranna has known little else other than planning, laws, and war. During the years prior to the Godswar, she was invoked repeatedly in the creation of treaties, declarations of war and peace, and all other legal documents.
After her brother Amaraan was born, and then his betrayal in the Godswar, Oranna became obsessed with creating the perfect laws that would allow her and her allies to invade and destroy the members of the rebellion. She was also instrumental in writing the Black Pact, though she does not know it. Seduced by a Demonspawn of the Demonqueen, he had her write up the most convoluted and ironclad marriage agreement that they could envision, and when the ‘Spawn vanished, so too did the draft of the proposal, which the Queen used as a basis for her Black Pact witht he rebels. If Oranna were ever to find out, it would be either unknowable rage or the deepest of despair that would engulf her.
Little has changed throughout her lifetime, and though she has masterminded a number of invasions of the Accursed Iron Marches, little has come of it, fanning the flame of her ambition to be a stronger, larger and more powerful leader in the Court of the Paltonarchs.
Oranna holds an especially warm soft spot in the gold, blackened ice heart that many say she has, for her mother. Together, they have become a tandem pair of tacticaian and General, able to see both the present and the future to enable decisive battles when they engage the enemy. It is through their planning and information that three accursed have been slain. Other gods and goddesses, though, she has little to do with and little to care about, though she practically despises Ariannas who embdies what Oranna sees as the worst traits all tied up into a single being.
