Kord
One the most popular Suloise deities, at least in terms of folklore and tales he appears in, Kord is the hero god of strength and personal combat. He is said to have given mankind the art of wrestling and is credited with slaying numerous monsters.
Lendor
Lendor was perhaps seen by ancient Suel as the personification of time, but by the later Imperium he is the god of infinite space as well as time and the first cause that proceeded all existence. As such, Lendor is understood in some traditions as the supreme deity of Law or Divine Law's personification, though the Oeridian Church of Law (when it recognizes him at all) views him as the embodiment of the strictly mechanistic law of the material world, a flawed demiurge subordinate to higher, spiritual law. In folk belief he is again just the long-bearded Father Time.
Phaulkan
Phaulkan is a god of sky and storms among the ancient Suel, in latter times he is primarily invoked as a god of wind and weather, and of interest to sailors and travelers. Depictions in the current age more often show him as youthful and clean-shaven.
Wee Jas
Wee Jas is the goddess of magic and death. As a deity of Law, she was a frequently present but minor figure in Suloise religion, but as the patron of magic, she is frequently invoked at the start of magical rituals and shows up in the iconography of classic arcane works.
Nice grouping. Leading with Kord and ending with the Red Lady does something really interesting . . . instead of assuming the Suel civilization was all about really urbane concepts, we get a bifurcation between primal law and perennial chaos, the wizardly and barbarian expressions.
ReplyDeleteThis can play out in awesome ways like making the UA barbarian class a fundamental aspect of modern suel-influenced religion, with the viking tribes venerating the Kord side and renouncing the Jas side. Lendor and his isles become a variant form of their law, carried by a different remnant tribe or tribes and possibly leaning toward "evil" as the Kordite churches lean toward "good." In general it looks like the lawful / intellectual / "evil" tribes form most of the better known suel diaspora, they would have been led by wizard princes. The chaotic / athletic / "good" tribes end up in the peninsula or marry into Sheldomar communities, which explains the barbarian class in UA if we still believe that book is the Sheldomar book.
And of course having a thor type and a sophisticated magic lady in dynamic equilibrium makes the modern Suel cultures reminiscent of glorantha survivals, this is what Orlanth and the Goddess look like several thousand years later.
I like it!
ReplyDeleteKord was one of very few deities to make it into D&D 4e, which is quite an accomplishment considering how far that edition pared down the divine ranks from earlier editions. That version of him cribs the storm/weather domain and adds it to strength, making him even more of Thor archetype. Likely the most popular he's ever been with players, partly owing to being an obviously adventurer-friendly god and partly from having vastly less competition from other pantheons - because there pretty much weren't any. The Dawn War didn't leave many survivors, and many minor and lesser deities from other editions were demoted to servants of the "real" gods.
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