The Laurentian pantheon (pronounced lore-ENT-ee-an) is one of the major regional pantheons on Kishar. Most followers of the pantheon live in the the vast and cold northern landscape known as Laurentia, or else in one of the surrounding areas like Rothurland, Izgrev, or Koritan.
Overview
The gods of the Laurentian pantheon are dispassionate deities who rarely take notice of the mortal realm. Still, they are prayed to in hopes they might deign to distract themselves from their internecine struggles long enough to grant boons to their faithful. In the Laurentian conception of the divine, the gods are absorbed by feuds and conflicts between each other, wrapped up in complex webs of shifting alliances, loyalties, and rivalries.
To those that follow the Laurentian pantheon, worship of ancestors and ghosts is seen as equally important as the veneration of the gods, if not more so. Ancestor spirits have far more impact on the world and can be communed with regularly, and are therefore more reliable spiritual guides than deities. Still, the gods are worshiped regardless, as one would never wish to invoke their wrath if they happened to look down from the lands of the divine.
In the creation story of the Laurentian pantheon, the gods lived in a divine world, which was the only world at the time. They feasted and fought, forming alliances, relationships, and rivalries, then breaking them and starting them all over again. Eventually one amongst them, Ubilai, had enough of these endless pursuits. He sneaked away from the godly realm and set about making his own, to be populated by his loyal servants whose support he would use to take his rightful place over all the over deities, bringing them into line beneath him. When the other gods took notice at last, they flew into a rage and attacked Ubilai - all except his brother Skohsla stood against him. Ubilai was defeated, his attempt at creating a world of evil and order halted. But it had already begun, and the gods knew that if allowed to fester its denizens were bound to challenge them directly in the future. They took Ubilai's remains and used them to shape the world to their own aims instead. His flesh became the land, his blood the seas, and his bones the mountains. His influence scattered into dust, the new mortal realm was no longer as lawful and orderly as Ubilai had intended, but rather infinitely chaotic and full of unimagined opportunity.
Skohsla looked with anger at what was done to his brother and vowed revenge. Though Ubilai was not dead, he was reduced to a pale shadow of his former self, stripped of all structure and most of his power. The World-Encircler began his slow, grinding battle against the other gods, seeking to destroy the mortal world to free the remains of his sibling and grant him form once more. This battle continues to the present day, and believers in the Laurentian pantheon consider the defeat of the gods by Skohsla to be inevitable. At some point in the future, the World-Encircler will gain enough strength to finally push through the defenses of the other gods, who will by this point be once again too caught up in their own squabbles to notice.
Followers of the Laurentian pantheon tend to heavily anthropomorphize the divine in their depictions.
Deities
| Name | Alignment | Areas of Concern | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haihaz | LG | Rulership, hunting, duty | Haihaz (pronounced HIGH-hahz) |
| Taufran | NG | Families, protection, hospitality, mothers, children | Taufran (pronounced TAU-fron) |
| Aljana | NG | Curiosity, art, music, conjuration magic | Aljana (pronounced all-YAH-nah) |
| Austron | CG | Travel, storytelling, storms, camps, bonfires, ghosts | Austron (pronounced OW-stron) |
| Saiwalo | N | Souls, the dead, inevitability, judgement | Saiwalo (pronounced sigh-WAH-loh) |
| Vihansa | N | Healing, conflict, weapons | Vihansa (pronounced vee-HAN-sah) |
| Nemedaz | N | Nature, weather, air, water, farming | Nemedaz (pronounced neh-meh-DAHZ) |
| Runo | CN | Trickery, personal freedom, raiding, lycanthropes, the moon | Runo (pronounced ROO-no) |
| Gautaz | NE | Ambition, rivalry, unsavory necessities | Gautaz (pronounced GOW-taz) |
| Skohsla | CE | Destruction, chaos, revenge, curses, linnorms | Skohsla (pronounced SKOH-slah) is a god of destruction, chaos, revenge, and curses. Known as the World-Encircler, Skohsla seeks to destroy the mortal world in order to allow his brother Ubilai to regain his form.
Those driven by revenge often worship Skohsla, praying to the god for strength as they pursue those that have wronged them. His followers are rarely secretive, preferring instead to wield violence and fear against those that would stand in their way. Neither the god nor his followers are particularly subtle. Linnorms, the great creatures of the northern landscapes, are often associated with Skohsla. The god is the creator, or perhaps father, of the serpentine monsters, and many adherents of the Laurentian pantheon believe that linnorms continue to serve as Skohsla's underlings. It is said that he fashioned the first curses to give to the linnorms, such that they might take their vengeance on those that fought against them. Skohsla is commonly depicted in two ways. The first is as a massive linnorm that surrounds the world, slowly constricting it. The second is rather more anthropomorphized, a giant horned figure with serpentine features. |
| Ubilai | CE | Lost causes, undeath, caves | Ubilai (pronounced OOH-bih-lie) is a god of lost causes, undeath, caves, and the dangerous that lurk out of sight. He was originally a very different god, one of structure and order, but these aspects were taken from him along with his body when he was defeated by the other deities of the pantheon. Today Ubilai is a relatively minor god with only a small following. Still, he remains theologically important for providing Skohsla the motivation to destroy the world.
When his body was stolen from him and torn apart, it is said that Ubilai was forced to seek another mode of existence, in doing so creating undeath. Many of his followers are necromancers or undead creatures. Amongst both his followers and those opposed to the deity, necromancy is thought to require Ubilai's direct involvement - the fact that it remains possible to raise the dead shows that the god's influence on the mortal world, while reduced, still remains. Ubilai is also closely connected to caves and the underground world. As his flesh became the soil, delving below ground makes one more susceptible to being swayed towards the god. Many geographical features in the Laurentian landscape are associated with Ubilai, from mountain ranges to lakes to the vast expanse of the northern tundra. Ubilai is usually depicted as a haggard, often greatly injured figure. Sometimes he is shown as skeletal or necrotic, his form barely holding together. |
Area of worship
The disparate peoples of Laurentia account for most of the followers of the pantheon, but they are not the only ones. To the west the inhabitants of Rothurland have long worshiped the same gods, albeit sometimes in slightly altered forms. Historically the Laurentian deities had followings in old Razgovir, but it has greatly declined there as the region has been reshaped over the last half millennia. Small numbers of adherents to the old gods still live in Koritan and Izgrev, with some very isolated groups continuing to worship the pantheon as far afield as the northern mountains of Talam Galta, but the pantheon has nowhere near the following in these areas that it once did.
Connections to other pantheons
The creation story of the Laurentian pantheon is quite unlike that of any of the other major pantheons, as is its near complete lack of lawful deities. Laurentian gods are seen as having very mortal strengths and failings in rather similar manners to Hellean ideas of the divine, but this is the only major connection between the two sets of beliefs.
In Rothurland, the Laurentian gods are often worshiped in forms that have been syncretized somewhat with their Hellean or Chaskan interpretations.