Venadak

Introduction

Venadak is the most powerful of all the Gods, and he is also the most feared. Once the beloved and gloried God of Order and Light, and an image of the divine love held for their creations, he has since become a corrupted force of terror and spite, locked within the depths of the infernal plane. Among all the Gods, even the corrupted ones, Venadak speaks and interacts with the world the least... and so, little is known about him now. He is spoken of with a sense of tragedy and sorrow, but also incredible worry, and around him come speculations of worldly death and the apocalypse, the God viewed as the bringer of the end-times. Many believe he is awaiting a moment to leave his darkly realm, and as the Gods have learned of the horror he has become, they fear the moment he decides that he will contain himself no longer.

History

Upon the emergence of the universe, and the concept of time, when all Gods were scattered across the endless dark depths - it was Venadak who brought them all together. It was his light that shone through the darkness, and that called out to them like a beacon. Though the other Gods believed they were alone, he felt a connection to all of them within himself. Because of this, Venadak was able to unite the Gods, turning them in some ways into a sort of family. For this reason, it has been said throughout time that he was viewed as the elder brother, guiding them through the mysteries and confusion of a universe shrouded by darkness and endless space. Even though, perhaps, he did not understand much of the surrounding circumstances himself.

Venadak always had a unique power among the Gods -- that of Order. By bringing order to disorder, and forming shapeless chaos, he was able to create the planes that divide celestial life. It was his power that helped to create the mortal realms, and the Reverie, the land of the Gods -- and eventually Bel, thousands of years after the beginning of his story.

With this power, he constructed the foundations of Atharen, and separated it from the other planes within the cosmos. It was a decision by all of the Gods to create a world on which they would live, with a multitude of them coming together to design it, adding the contours of the mountains and the riverbeds the led into the sea. When the world was complete, many of them almost instinctively sought for life to fill it. Spirits came, those in their servitude -- and then mortal life. While this is all known, it had a distinct impact upon Venadak who began to see himself as a sort of shepherd, not only to his Godly brethren but all of those things created.

With them he came to wield a close and unyielding bond, and through the way that the other Gods deferred to him - and the kindness and greatness he presented - he was considered the chief of the Gods, and was worshiped and revered by all. Statues were built of his depiction that still remain even today, across first the Elven world, and then the lands of the younger races. As eras passed, tribulation and sorrow came, and ever the difficulty of the Gods' decision to let the people be free to make choices that led to their own pain. Perhaps because of this, Venadak began to grow more distant from the world as he saw endless wars rage, and a mess of concepts he'd never before even considered; xenophobia, zealotry, conduits for spite. He learned that the mortal mind was perhaps even more complex than that of Gods. He would roam the Reverie for decades, walking the gardens within which lied so many dreams, alongside Kyrikain with whom he held the closest bond. Venadak tried deeply to truly understand mortals, and in time he learned to appreciate the ways in which they lived, even as they lashed out with rage.

He eventually took on a different approach, and became a different sort of God -- one who accepted others regardless of their woe and vice. He engaged in quiet ceremony at his lonesome, and traversed the world to live among others. He chose to distance himself from the politics of the Gods and to live among their children instead. Venadak had many experiences, then, and from them he learned of the unspoken brilliance of the mortal mind. Indeed, in traveling with them -- laying with them, spending time with them and viewing through hidden eyes -- he had begun to develop a different lens himself. Venadak was beginning to change; to become more lifelike. No longer was he constrained by the rigidity of his Godly principles, by a simple will to fulfill and advocate for his domains -- instead, he began to have his own dreams. He built countless families of his own as generations passed, and explored the world he and his companions of old had created, but in earnest and through a simple lens. He let others destroy his mortal form; he died, many times, succumbing to old age or to the axe of a butcher. He was remade. He developed his own ideologies, living through avatars that fulfilled them.

It was a symbiosis of God and man that created what is now today the basics of principles, values and moral code. In Venadak's many experiences with mortal life, he began to place weight on certain ideas and beliefs, and somehow across ages these values took precedence and began to influence mortal laws. The concept of justice, retribution and punishment -- and all of the many complexities with it -- effectively came from this union, and a true understanding of 'Order' came from living in the lawless chaos of the mortal world.

Always an onlooker, Venadak never truly interfered with the grand narratives of the mortal world. While he would act at a limited capacity, and would occasionally influence public thought, he would never intervene in order to stop a war or anything of the like. Even as his first people, the Elves, were nearly destroyed by a gruesome act of genocide -- he sorrowfully looked on, allowing mortals the choices they made. It was only at the closure of the Fourth Age that he, in his capacity as a God, moved to intervene.

Venadak saw the way in which the Empire, which reigned at the time, had used magical power to defile the divine; and to seek out divinity. He knew how the Emperor of that realm - Valen Dres - had strived for power far beyond what was due to him, and how he was willing to tear through the planes that separated the divine and mundane realms. In the past, Venadak had culled beings known as the Light-Touched for using the facade of divinity to fulfill their worldly agendas. It was always the threat to these separations that incited the God of Light to act, and so finally he did. At the apex of the Fourth Age, and before the action that brought about the Sundering's might, he went to confront the Emperor and to end the machinations that he believed could destroy their world. What happened next was no trickery or ruse: Venadak was defeated.

The Emperor, Valen, had lived a long life. A Demigod, he had gathered many other Demigods to rule as his council. Some of these pseudo-divine were even the children of Venadak himself, crafted by his many physical bonds to the men and women of their world. All-in-all, there were twelve of these divine beings present upon the God's confrontation, and -- perhaps due to some reluctance to cull them -- they managed to best the God by a hair, defeating him and eventually taking his form and essence. Seven other Gods came to his aide, hoping to free him before Valen was able to find a way to destroy him, and a brief battle raged. It was a bloodbath; all of the Demigods that gathered were killed within moments, as the militant half of the divine pantheon ripped through the palace and punished the people of the city below. The capital of the Empire was razed in a destructive fury, and quickly the divine beings closed in.

Perhaps Venadak's attack - and his failure - had been the one thing Emperor Dres needed in order to achieve what he so desired. Most believe he did not obtain anything but death, only managing to damage what he could as he desperately lashed out in his final, bitter moments. The Emperor used what he had learned to sunder the planes, using Venadak's failing form as a conduit, and rupturing through his own soul to break through the foundational stability of these realms. A fracture was made through the Light God's chest, and as the planes contorted and holes bled through them, the unmitigated ether of the universe flowed through the God's body, his own form the epicenter of it all.

The seven other Gods that had come to his aide, as well as Valen, were the first beings struck by this explosion of destructive power, and they were filled with a raw energy so copious that even they suffered the extremities of threshold sickness, their divine souls incapable of managing the sheer amount of energy that flowed through them. Their bodies were first mangled and nearly obliterated, and then the corruptive nature of this overflow took root from within their veins. Venadak became the most corrupted of them all, a living vessel for the sundering of the planes, the outflow of energy that eventually spread to the corners of their world. The mortal plane was nearly destroyed, with the closest life to the epicenter being totally culled. The entire region of Khothkhal was brutally wounded, with whole countries overcome by ethereal waste, and corruptive plagues.

But Venadak was still alive, and so were the other seven, though all of them were now corrupted - and he was the worst. Even facing the breadth of the Sundering so directly, and in full destructive force, and even filled with near-infinite degenerative energy... he and his companions still lived. It was only then that they truly understood the nature of divinity, and just how Godly they truly were. They looked upon the Empire around them and saw that the land itself had fallen into a rotting sea, and that all living souls for hundreds of miles around had died the moment this corruptive energy emerged. But they still lived.

Venadak could already see the madness beginning to brew within many of their souls. The corruption had in some way begun to decay their minds, much as he felt it decaying his own. As they all recognized their power, many of them began to speak of how they should no longer allow mortals to lead their own fate; how the actions of Lord Dres had taught them that the people beneath them needed to be strictly controlled. And they laughed, and reveled, in the immensity of their might; how they had survived the Sundering, while millions of others died like crushed ants. He began to see a difference in his peers, and while some of them had been affected far worse than others, the inherent shreds of goodness within most of them had begun to fade.

The Light-God acted, and created a new plane. Venadak managed to construct a plane that even divine beings could not slip through, confining all of them into this new realm of Bel to ensure that their corruptive energy did not continue to leak into the world, and did not rot the divine realm. In containing them all, he averted the true dangers of the Sundering's aftermath: the madness of the Gods that would see all of Atharen razed. Venadak locked himself at the bottom-most layer of Bel, preventing even the other Gods from entering, so that they could not come together to destroy him and thus free themselves of their prison. He would bring with him his spiritual companions, and they would create more of their own, to provide themselves company and to fulfill his and their ambitions.

And since this time -- now hundreds of years past -- Venadak has lived at the lowest layer of Bel, alone, contemplating as corruption continues to make an affront upon his mind. A warden to his own self-created prison, it is known by many that he has lost himself and the man and God that he once was. No longer an unmitigated beacon of light, Venadak finds himself scarred by pain and isolation, and the rot of ether within him. He has become a torturer, a punisher, a cruel flail of unending judgment -- but one who still maintains his prison, perhaps as a result of his last decent shreds.

Domains

Venadak has three domains: Light, Order and Creation. However, 'Creation' is rarely spoken of, largely due to a lack of understanding as to what it truly means. All Gods are capable of creating, but Venadak is capable of doing so to a different degree. While all can create, Venadak can bend reality to a level beyond that of the other Gods around him. He can create physical laws, he can defy nature, and he can produce sentience within nothingness at a level that even the Gods of Life struggle with. Venadak is a true warper of reality, capable of manifesting his divine will even beyond the barriers of Bel. Many of the ethereal storms that have raged across Atharen since the Sundering are actually the result of his misguided divine will; moments of weakness, suffering or bitter rage, leaking out beyond their confinement. His divine will is perhaps the most sharp and capable of all, which leads to the extent of his power.

Order is the Domain that allows Venadak to create the foundation of planes, while 'Creation' effectively allows him to build them and fill them in, enabling him to create vast structures of land with refined acuity. Order also allows him to manipulate the planes, and open doors through them. He effectively creates laws and rules for planes using this power, with many of these laws so compelling that even other Gods cannot defy them, forcing them to play by the rules he constructed.

Light is a simple domain of his: before his corruption, he was called the God of the Sun, as he created it. Venadak is capable of producing endless light, and manipulating it to wield a variety of characteristics and features. The reason the sun's glow brings warmth is because of him; the reason it travels quickly, the reason it nourishes life. Many of these factors were decided in coordination with the other Gods, but the importance of light is due to Venadak's influence over it, and how it was made to affect the world. Venadak's powers over light are immense. He is capable of wielding it as a weapon of endless possibilities, and can perform great feats by using his light alone.

Influence

Venadak was always depicted as a God of civilization and laws before his fall. He was also the God of the Sun, and many also attributed the creation of Atharen itself to him, though it was a collaborative project between all of the Gods. He was incredibly important to the divine pantheon before his fall, with the sun the primary symbol of the Faith for thousands of years. However, as a result of his descent, this is no longer the case. He is now depicted as a creature of terror, with darkly talons and deep red eyes that stare with hatred. His 'light' is always said to wield a smoldering red haze within it, with his realm a wasteland of fire and misery. Venadak has moved from being the archetypal figure of Godliness to that of destruction, evil and ruin, and perhaps much of this is due to the living Gods' fear of him. Mostly he is a terrifying enigma, and often when brought up, people will simply say not to speak of him before ultimately changing the subject.

Dogma

Venadak does not seek out followers any longer. Even the cultists who do worship him tend to be scattered without a reliable divine text or dogma to work from, and so they tend to have a plethora of regionally-influenced beliefs. He almost never speaks to mortals, and seems to lack in ambition to spread any of his word or ideals. As a result, he ascribes no code of ethics to his followers, and has no true dogma that is known.

Notable Religious Factions

The Order of the Imprisoned

The Order of the Imprisoned, or the Imprisoned, are the largest cult of Venadak by far. They are a group dedicated to freeing the self-imprisoned God, and reintroducing him to the world so that he may cleanse it of mortal anarchy. They believe that the Gods must rule Atharen, and that the eight Living Gods must be punished for their failure to intervene in the events that led to the Sundering. While Venadak is the chief figure of the Imprisoned, they worship all eight Corrupted Gods, and often facilitate between their many cultists across the world.

Bel

Bel is the realm of Venadak, who created it to be his own prison, and bound the other corrupted Gods within it. The bottom layer of Adena is where Venadak lives, and so information on his realm can be found in that section of the article.

Demigods

Venadak once had the most Demigods of any of the Gods, as he would often engage in long-term relationships with mortal men and women, and would create children with them through divine means. As a result of this, there are still a considerable number of Venadak's Demigods alive, though many of them came to Bel to live with their father after his corruption, leaving very few remaining on the surface world. It is unknown if Venadak has had any mortal lovers since his fall, and while it is possible for the Corrupted Gods to procreate through their avatars, not a single new child of Venadak has been confirmed on Atharen in hundreds of years.

Lyria

Lyria is probably the most famous of Venadak's children, a Hytori woman who has since become one of the many warmongers of Bel, leading a large army within the Mantle of Arun. Many of these followers of hers are spirits who once served her father, though she has also created many of her own to serve as an extension of her divine might. Lyria is a cruel and vicious woman, one who has been corrupted by the ether of Bel for hundreds of years, leading her to madness and loathing. She believes that Bel is her birthright and that even the Gods of Velyar must bow to her.

Before her own corruption, Lyria was Venadak's beloved daughter, most loyal and fervent of his children. She was the first to join him in his solitude in Adena, but the corruption proved too much for even her divine veins. She eventually grew enraged with his inaction and left to fight in the Endless War, wielding her immense powers to subdue and cull the many lesser spirits and even mortals who found their way within the grim realm.