Living Gods of the Blessed Lands

Symbology is the language of the divine. It was once man's error to think that gods took on forms that we could talk to, engage, love, or even kill. Only through symbols can gods be reached, and only by gathering those symbols and wearing them can one experience what it means to be in contact with the divine--even if for just a while.

Lonely are the gods now.

There are only those that wear the symbols and thus become gods, and those that do not. For generations, seven royal families have provided the sacrifices needed. They take the Holy Instruments and they slit both their wrists and necks and lie in a tub of their own blood and the symbols are wedded to them spiritually. Then the bodies are left in the Garden of Eden, which sits atop the Palace Ziggurat, and ten days later the noble emerges a new man, a divine man, something that cannot be called mortal any longer. 

This is apotheosis.

They are 10 to 15 feet tall. Their memories remain. Their personalities are intact. They are divine only when they call forth their Holy Instruments. While their symbols are donned, they can slay dragons, create life, bring back the dead, and invoke whatever holy aspects their symbols represent.

Scribes that don't record the prophecy-rants of Handless Priests spend all day carving into stone the words and actions of the gods. These records are kept underground, a dark cave, filled with the symbol-covered idols of conquered cities. Though those cities are now all ash, this Holy Tomb contains the sealed memories and powers of a once vibrant tapestry of religion that spread across the Blessed Lands.

Other gods have been murdered, consumed, or destroyed, their symbols scattered across the Blessed Lands and their religions blasted from memory. Below are the remaining living gods of the Blessed Lands.

VEILED WEEPER ALLALOTL

Symbols: Full-Body Veils, Butterflies, Tears, Still Births, Prayers with your face in your hands, standing alone, walking with moving your feet, bare feet, bloody footprints.

Allalotl is the goddess of Sorrow, Forgiveness, Childbirth, and Rebirth. She walks the Blessed Lands without moving her feet and leaves blood-filled footprints all the same. Those who drink from this blood, kiss her feet, and spend one hundred days crying will be reborn upon death as a child with all their memories, so long as they swear themselves to hunt that which has killed them and nothing else. 

Her veil is the same as those worn by Dragon Wives and they her most devoted followers, for they mourn both their children and their husbands and wish both to be reborn one day as dragons so that the cycle may begin anew. Handless Priests in turn preach that one day Allalotl will be stolen away by her sister, Tiamat, and sacrificed in order to restore the poisoned minds of all wyrms.

She weeps for her murdered father, her consumed mother, and for all souls trapped in the burned ruins of the Old Opal Kings. She is the last princess alive.

Blessing: Praying to Allalotl and then cutting your feet will allow any who drink from your footsteps to heal 1 hit point per footstep drank. Every 10 footsteps, the blessed loses 5 hit points.

HALF-SUN SINTOTEC

Symbols: Eclipses, the Sun, the Shattered Moon, Dragon Skulls, Sexual Rituals, Dim Light, Twilight, Old Dragonslayers, Half-Covered Faces, Dawn & Dusk, Gold Swords with Red Edges.

Half-Sun Sintotec wears an ornate golden mask over the upper half of his face matching the rising sun. He is a warrior, a hunter, and a monster who once trained the Old Dragonslayers before the Dragon Wives surpassed them. He is a master of magic and a master of blade and a master of traps and with these he keeps the city alive and strong.

Though the order of the Old Dragonslayers is no more, Half-Sun Sintotec still forges weapons and armor from gold and his blood in preparation to one day arm every man, woman, and child for what he believes to be the coming final battle of the Blessed Lands. A hatred burns in him alongside a lust for this apocalypse. There he will find Tiamat, cut off her limbs, and use her body to birth a new pantheon of deities to restore the afterlife to what it once was.

Half-Sun Sintotec is the oldest of the god-princes, and is thus the Steward-King of the City of Dragon Wives. 

Blessing: If you melt gold, slice your wrist, and then cover your face in a mask made from this concoction you will be blessed by Sintotec, and when next you would take damage, instead the mask will break.

GATEKEEPER METAMM

Symbols: Gates, Doors, City Walls, the Color Blue, Toothless Skulls, Flayed Skins, Wings, Martyrdom, Opal Daggers, Inscribed Tablets, Cuneiform, Long Shadows, Figures Perched on Architecture

Gatekeeper Metamm is that which holds the gates of the Blessed Lands, preventing unclean, sinful souls from filtering in. He is the brother of the murdered God-King and the father of death, who was born when Metamm killed the first mortal and roped their soul into the Blessed Lands. He perches ontop of tall structures, most often the gates that lead into the City of the Dragon Wives. From there, he sees all, and brings in new life from beyond the endless mountains that wall heaven in. It is said that if one's shadow turns red and stretches long, they have caught the eye of Gatekeeper Metamm, and will soon walk the ash-dunes.

As death's father, he holds dominion over the mortal dragons, and has taken from them their immortality. With it, he has made the Dragon Wives more powerful. By flaying the skin of a captured warrior and wearing his toothless skull, the sacrificer will never be able to drop below 1 hit point until either the skull or the skin are removed. All writing done on stone with an opal dagger (his second child) is known by him, and one can earn his attention by carving a prayer into gates, doors, and city walls.

Gatekeeper Metamm is the most elder god left in the City of the Dragon Wives. Stone gargoyles are his angels.

Blessing: If you carve words of protection into your bones with an Opal Dagger, Metamm will kill the next creature that would have just reduced you to 0 hit points before they do so.

ERESHTETEO, WHO ANNIHILATES 

Symbols: War, Violent Death, Wounds, Destruction, Genocide, Desecration, Breaking of Objects, Eating of Flesh, Scattering of Bones, Macahuitl's, Curved Objects, Death Screams, the Color Black

Ereshteteo, Who Annhilates, is one of the two twins of Death. She represented those who died horrible or violent deaths. She killed her brother after he killed their uncle, the God-King, and has since haunted the ashen waste. She is covered in a dozen bleeding wounds and the blood from these wounds creates soldiers made of ash who hunt and murder any living thing they can find. In her hands is the broken macahuitl she used to beat her brother to death. She eats the flesh of those she kills and uses their strength to sharpen her glass-weapons.

Many times has Ereshteteo battled Tiamat, Dragon Wives, and Sintotec. Those killed by Ereshteteo are forgotten by all things, and any impact they had on the world is attributed to an unsolvable mystery. Because of this she does not know that she killed her twin, nor why she is covered in so many battle wounds. 

Ereshteteo is the youngest of the gods and can be encountered in the ash dunes. Woe to those who find her.

Blessing: If you kill your sibling, any wounds suffered during the fight will forever bleed, but the blood will create a 1st level fighter every week to serve you.

BLOOD DREAM XOASH

Symbols: Dreams, Nightmares, Oracles, Visions, Prophecies, Flowing Blood, Baths, Open Spaces, Corpses, Pastures, Flowers, Orchards, The Rantings of Philosophers, The Hate of Heretics, the Fear of Doomsayers, Sacred Texts Yet to be Written

Blood Dream Xoash has no agency in the world of the waking. His eyes, mouth, and ears are all stitched shut by dragon-tendon. His arms are kept still by bone bars that impale them into his body. His legs are severed and are kept tied to his waist like the trophies of a headhunter. In the Dreams and Nightmares of the sleeping he appears, walking, speaking, listening, in a thousand forms, all fake, all designed intricately based on the memories, desires, and sins of those who dream.

Xoash is a god of illusions, sleep, and what happens when the two are wed. His children are all nightmares and his grandchildren are all dreams. He speaks through them, for dreams and nightmares can see the future and communicate them, though encoded, to others. At the heart of the City of Dragon Wives Blood Dream Xoash lays sleeping, fueling the prophecy engines inside of each Handless Priest and patiently oraclesmithing new seers.

Blood Dream Xoash was the cousin of the God-King. It was the God-King who imprisoned Xoash, so that the future would always be known.

Blessing: After five months of practicing lucid dreaming, you can speak with Xoash's children directly. You learn the location of one thing, no matter what it is. The GM must put it in a game session within 4 sessions. This doesn't mean you automatically get it, just that you know how to get to it, making it a possibility.