The Drinkers of Light

The two sources of celestial power in Oth are light and fire. Light is of Alef; fire is of Tav. That much is broadly agreed on. The light of Alef fuels the web of life (and thus the web of magic) on the surface, flowing through plants to animals and eventually to thinking beings like the alefim, grimmot, and humans.

Some say that humans also contain the fire of Tav; this is controversial. Letys Ink-Eyes' thesis defense on the topic was famously interrupted when a Last Radiance terror cell firebombed the classroom. Their message of "if she loves fire, let her have it" was considered philosophically unsound, but pragmatically convincing.

Anyway, it's well-known that humans contain a sliver of Alef's light. What's less well known is that this light can be stolen.

They rise to positions of power. They draw all eyes when they enter a room. They are the subject of fascination, admiration, speculation. Victims come of their own volition, once the art is mastered.

Alefim call it "oluká," and many give the same label to its practitioners. When the right resonance is established in the weave of magic, the physical and metaphysical can be made to mingle. Celestial light, that abstract etheric concept, harmonizes with the material world. An oluká can then draw it out of their victim by consuming their bodily essence.

Eating flesh is possible, but rare. Oluká who take the ghoulish path rarely last long, as the hunger for light quickly becomes an addiction, and hiding serial cannibalism is difficult. Instead, the most common choice is the consumption of blood.

yum

(There are other reliable methods, from which spring the legends of succubi.)

Light so stolen can only be held for so long. When it inevitably drains away, the oluká is left ravenous for more. They will do anything to regain the feeling of transcendence it grants, to say nothing of the adulation and status to which they have become accustomed. 

They take more, more, more. Even those who are careful begin leaving a trail of bodies.

At best, they are hunted down and slain without anyone learning the reason for their predations. At worst, they begin teaching the secret to others, gathering apprentices to share the burden of collecting victims. These twisted cabals are often made up of the leader's former victims themselves, now bound to their teacher through ties of not-entirely-natural loyalty.

Some families of oluká persist for generations. They age only slowly, dying to violent internal struggle more often than time's arrow.

Brahim Phtali, called the merciful, is kept under lock and key by the glass archivists of Nabb. In exchange for a trickle of volunteer victims, he provides insight into historical arguments, lost lore he still recalls.

There are those in Nabb who question the balance of power in this relationship.

One might expect the alefim to revile this perversion of their lord's power, but they seem indifferent. Perhaps the degeneracies of an already-degenerate people hold no surprise for them. Or perhaps they are all too glad to see humanity devour itself from within.

Ghost Cults

Ghosts are usually a temporary annoyance.

The various religions of Oth are divided on the matter of the immortal soul. The Church of the Last Radiance teaches that Alef reclaims their light at the moment of death, and the deceased returns to unity with the divine. Their itinerant preachers often add that souls tainted by evil are instead seized by Tav-who-is-below, dragged down to fire and pain. Church authorities discourage this heretical strain.

Ghosts complicate matters. When a person of particular power--magical, political, it doesn't seem to matter--dies, they may leave an echo of their spirit behind. Ghosts linger in the places they spent their lives, haunting those who cared the most for them. Their power over the living depends on the strength of their relationship. As those left behind move on, the ghosts fade.

On rare occasions, a ghost becomes part of the legend of a place. If everyone in a town knows that the old mill is haunted, that mental energy may be enough to anchor the ghost and prevent it from fading. Ghost hunting is a mostly psychological art, and exorcisms rely on convincing the community that the spirit has been banished (which then becomes true).

what a pain in the neck

Anyway, those aren't the sort of ghosts the Cults worship.

These days, there are two great Powers in the world. Alef: the Last Radiance, the Coin of the Morning, the Dayflame; and Tav: Chained Tav, Tav-Who-Is-Below, the Deep One. But it wasn't always so. 

Once there were five, before Alef and Tav defeated and slew the others, long before mortal life was first conceived. The three dead Powers are corpses now, lifeless balls of rock that can be seen in the night sky, reflecting Alef's divine light.

But oh, what ghosts they left behind.

Such is the strength of these remnants that they can be felt even across the unimaginable distance to the sites of their haunting (their celestial corpses, of course). The four seasons are defined by the waxing and waning of their relative influence:

• Yodar: Yod ascendant. Caution, wisdom, harvest.
• Sachar: Samech ascendant. Family, hunger, meditation.
• Tsadar: Tsadi ascendant. Change, ambition, love.
• Afar: Alef alone. Plenty, growth, travel.

The seasons tug on the spirit as much as they change the weather. Far more wars break out in Tsadar than in Yodar, while most construction happens in Afar despite the heat. The influence of the dead Powers is everywhere, but most folk--even foolish humans--know better than to speak with them.

The Ghost Cults are the exception. They spring up in cities, usually among those who consider themselves enlightened and erudite. Often they begin as "research organizations," groups of scientists and mages who think they can learn from the Powers, uncover secrets of the universe.

Once they start hearing the voices, though, the devolution is quick.

purely academic

You can tell a ghost cult's age by how much its members resemble their patron. Early-stage cultists of Samech are grim and reclusive, while by the end their teeth are stained red with human blood. Tsadi-cults begin with duels and orgies, and end in mass suicide.

For the dead Powers are mad, and their madness is infectious.

As patrons, the celestial remnants have little to offer. Their fires are long extinguished; they have no strength to share. The greatest asset of the ghost cults is their unity. At least at first, the members' common allegiance grants a supernatural feeling of community and camaraderie. It is this sensation that holds the cult together as its rituals become more extreme, and society at large begins to root it out. 

Because of their intellectual appeal, ghost cults often count powerful mages among their initiates. Zavesh the Spider-Lord infamously made worship of Yod the official religion of the Venomous Empire, and legend says that the seers of his inner circle were crafting a ritual to re-ignite Yod's inner fire when they were wiped from the map by a hurricane so powerful that it cracked bedrock.

Despite the dangers, it's rare to find a city of any consequence without some ghost cult activity. Although it's a rare occurrence for civilization to collapse entirely under their influence, the cults eat through the ranks of the aristocracy and intelligentsia, clashing in the shadows until they become too obvious to ignore. Then the horrors come to light, the membership is purged, and the city moves on. As long as there is hidden knowledge, some fool will seek it out.

For the voices do have secrets to tell.

Thoughts

Cults are an iconic feature of pulp fantasy. Contrary to what some have argued, I think there are plenty of good reasons for your average fantasy citizen to become a cultist. In a world of low social mobility and strict hierarchical society, cult membership is a "cheat code" to gaining respect and status. Anonymity and secrecy offer an escape from class-based identity, a chance to rise or fall on one's own merits. In that way, it serves much the same purpose as military service did in some time periods, but with less travel and (potentially) less danger.

The ghost cults are a different kind, though--fashionable among the upper crust rather than the hoi polloi. This isn't unlikely either; factions in the nobility are always looking for excuses to form alliances and consolidate their power-bases. It's just unfortunate for them that in this case the object of devotion eventually drives them stark raving mad.

From a fiction / gaming standpoint, the ghost cults are useful because they could have almost any goal or scheme. Kidnappings? Sure. Dark rituals? Absolutely. Vandalism? Oh boy, what a surprise when the trail of graffiti leads not to a gang of juveniles but a cabal of cannibalistic university professors. Heck, rip the cults out of Oth and put them in you own world. There's always someone who Looks Beyond.

-V

War in Heaven

Once upon a time, five beings of celestial power were contending over the same patch of real estate.

Of the five, two were siblings, and by virtue of alliance they defeated the other three, killing them one by one and reducing their once-glorious molten bodies to vast chunks of cold mortal matter. Of the survivors, one was called Alef; the other, Tav. With their common enemies gone, peace between the siblings was short-lived. In a second round of celestial combat, Alef overthrew the weaker Tav, stripping away their radiant photosphere and forcing them to withdraw to the very heart of their failing body. In this way Alef became the Last Radiance.

this town ain't big enough for the both of us

But Alef could not bring themselves to destroy their only sibling. Instead of snuffing out the last of Tav's fire, Alef wove a prison around their corpse, a net of power that would keep them contained, alive but unable to re-ignite their body. The web was a work of great subtlety, empowered by living resonators across Tav's surface. This carpet of life drank Alef's power from above and used it to grow stronger, spreading thick and deep on land in water alike.

The system was unstable. Though the biosphere was of Alef, its roots sank deep into Tav's flesh. The defeated sibling whispered in the dreams of flora, enticing new strains to spread uncontrolled, choking out their fellows before dying to tailored plagues, leaving vast swathes of barren ground. In this way Tav grew stronger. 

Volcanos breached the surface. Lava ran in rivers. Forests burned, and vast savannas were buried under molten rock. Tav strained at their prison walls.

Alef wiped it all out and started over.

This time, they added a feedback system: a secondary web of life, mobile and adaptable, to prune and tend the first layer. If the plant life fell out of balance, herds of grazers would push back, preventing the runaway specialization of the first age. Thinking ahead this time, Alef added further safeguards: if the grazers themselves ran off the rails, a hierarchy of predators would ensure that the pendulum swung back.

This worked slightly better.

The new two-layer prison-web was resistant to Tav's escape attempts, but it still tended to break down over time. Every few millennia, Alef was forced to turn their attention to putting out fires (often literal) in their sibling's containment system. This effort was little more than a minor annoyance, and the status quo might have persisted indefinitely, had Alef not had a brilliant idea (not a measure of quality; they can have no other kind).

The Last Radiance decided the problem was that no part of the system understood its own purpose. To remedy this, they would create avatars of their will, conscious sentient beings to maintain and protect the binding web. Alef had invented the soul.

A dilemma faced them, however. Should these new thinking wardens be sensitive to celestial power? Without attunement to the harmonies of the world, they would be unable to sense the effects of their interventions on the containing mechanism. Moreover, Alef would not be able to guide and inform--the creatures' nature would have to be perfect on the first try.

Conversely, sensitivity to the web would leave the beings open to the corrupting voice of Tav. The two powers speak in the same resonance; one cannot be heard without the other. In this way, celestial deafness could be an asset.

Alef hedged their bets and created both. To the people called alefim was granted deep unity with the binding network of life around the planet. They were thoughtful and quiet, with the ability to play the web like a great musical instrument. They had wisdom enough not to proliferate wildly, producing only enough offspring to maintain a steady population, the proper number to maintain the balance of nature without straining its resources.

Then there were the grimmot. From them Alef stripped all sense of the sublime, leaving only the mundane world-as-it-is. They knew nothing of the web, yet by their instincts they strengthened it anyway. The core urges of the grimmot led them to dig tunnels in the earth, great complex labyrinths that dulled Tav's senses and resonated with the carpet of life above. This resonance extended to their runes: though they could not use the web for magic as the alefim did, the grimmot learned to control its flow by engraving sigils into stone and metal.

alefim and grimmot

There were only two problems.

First, Alef's fears regarding corruption were well-founded. Over generations, the purity of the alefim's attunement to Alef weakened. Dissonent children began to be born: children who could feel the web only poorly, if at all; whose touch on it was rough and unsubtle. Weeping, the alefim cast these mutants from their utopian enclaves, only to see the uncouth offshoots band together into tribes of their own: tribes who lacked the alefim's taboo on expansion. Scholars among the alefim named them baazim, but in their own tongue the new people called themselves humanity. They spread far and fast, ecosystems straining under the weight of their petty empires.

Second, bound Tav had learned how to create souls of their own.

Hordes of tavarim tunneled up from below, breaching the smooth halls of the grimmot and poisoning the roots of alefim glade-cities. Nishavek the mother-tree burned to the ground, and proud Zarzayin, gem-city of the grimmot, was overrun by monstrous armies. A proxy war had begun, between the forces of Alef and those of Tav.

The conflict was grossly asymmetric. Alef's power outmatched Tav's by orders of magnitude, and the former could have reduced the latter to lifeless rubble in an instant. Only fraternal mercy kept the apocalypse at bay.

Tav's one advantage was proximity. The war was fought on their home turf, yea, on their very skin. Despite the disparity in power, whatever Alef created Tav could eventually imitate in lesser form. Moreover, restraint of their sibling claimed only part of Alef's attention. Most of their time was spent on celestial matters. Tav's forces, meanwhile, had their progenitor's mind ever on them.

Nevertheless, the tavarim suffered defeat after defeat. Bound by the web of life, Tav was too weak to pose a persistent threat. The forests and plains were cleansed of dark things. Only in the deep places of the world, the abyssal oceans and dark caverns, did Tav have strength sufficient to sustain their children. The grimmot suffered the worst from this--driven from their ancestral delves to defend fortresses that had once been mere entrance-halls, eternally besieged from below.

But this new equilibrium had a weak link of its own: humanity.

Human civilization spread across the world like ink through water. As man struggled against man and woman against woman, some among them learned that the power of the binding-web could be turned to their own advantage. Though they lacked the subtlety for alefim enchantments, human sorcerers discovered how to tear power from the web and bind it to themselves, growing strong and terrible. With each wizard-tower that rose, the web was weakened, and tavarim crept forth to reave once more.

that can't be good for the table

Alef was displeased. This displeasure took the form of cyclic cataclysms, each of which wiped great human empires off the map. Whenever a witch-queen grew too powerful, she would find her realm annihilated by a meteor strike, or reduced to ash by heavenly flame. Yet such was the nature of humanity that after each apocalypse, the survivors would crawl forth and rebuild.

As an equilibrium, this new mode requires more of Alef's attention than before the invention of sentience. Had they their way, Alef would wipe the surface clean of thinking life and return to the previous system of just plants and animals. However, there's no way to make Tav forget the secret of ensoulment. As long as the tavarim exist, Alef needs agents of their own to combat them.

So the war continues, an eternal arms race between powers ascendant and dying. Alef creates the great gem-serpents, and Tav answers with the wyrms of the earth. Tav incubates brutes of living stone, which Alef imitates through sentient storms.

Humans exist in no-man's land, seen by one side as useful dupes, by the other as failed experiments at best, traitors at worst. Nevertheless, in each new age they grow strong, until their hubris calls down fire from above once again.

How long remains this time?

Thoughts

Creation myths are so much fun. This one was inspired by Arnold's Centerra setting, where the Authority's throne is in the heart of the sun. The planet is alive in Centerra, too--with so many great ideas bouncing around, it's hard not to grab a few, mash them up, and sculpt something new and strange.

I like the fusion of sun-vs-dark and heaven-vs-earth; there's a lot of possibility space to explore RE air and height as pure and sacred / stone and depth as profane. Monsters and classic fantasy races get a new lens, too. Alefim and tavarim are sort of like the classic good/evil alignment dichotomy, except they both hate humans. Mankind isn't a favored child in this setting, we're the vermin that nothing seems to get rid of.

On naming: Latin gets mangled a ton for fantasy worlds, so I figured Hebrew could take one for the team on this go-round. -ot and -im are underused plural suffixes anyway, in my opinion. I'm playing fast and loose with phonology here, and semantics are out the window entirely. Sorry.

Yes, the alefim are elves and the grimmot are dwarves. I really like the archetypes, and at this point, having elves who AREN'T evil fascist aesthetes feels like it's the rebellious choice. As an RPG setting, my plan is for adventurers to be human-only. Everybody else knows their divine purpose; it's only humanity who gets to f*** around and find out.

Anyway, the next time you wonder why every cave and basement is full of creepy-crawlies: it's because the earth is the flesh of a dying god. Happy to help!

-V