I am the ground on which you stand. I am the stone of your walls. I am the mud in which your children play. I am the wealth you amass. I am the poison of your greed. I will be the soil of your gave.
God Name: Karkorthi
Title: Goddess of the Earth's Heart, the Stone Keeper
Gender: Female
Alignment: Neutral
God Appearance: She most often favors a giant stone scorpion adorned and shining with precious jewels set into gold and silver filigree on granite chitin. While great, terrible, and utterly inhuman is her appearance, she is also beautiful and statuesque in her own otherworldly way.
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Her very rarely used human form.
Personality: Karkorthi was always simply there. She remembers sleeping peacefully in her stone tomb until the first noisy squabbles of her siblings brought her, protesting, into concious existence.
Patient and resolute, her willingness to wait and watch are sometimes mistaken for sloth - and fatally so. When wakened, she is a quick and brutal force of crushing anger, but when placated and soothed, she is a calm and nurturing figure. Karkorthi tends to view the troubles of other gods as petty and temporary affairs, amusing to watch and occasionally participate in. The earth was there before, and it shall remain long after.
On the whole, Karkorthi is aloof, and rather vain, but not an unpleasant creature. As eternal as the rocks themselves, she would make a fine mediator between siblings on less than pleasant terms.
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Opinion of mortals: She adores the masons who carve great and beautiful monuments from her rocky bones, and the jewelers who make treasures from her rough skin, but despises those who burrow too greedily after her deepest secrets, destroying what she has so carefully built. Mostly she sees them all as tiny, short-lived ants. A curiosity vying for her favor, and sometimes an annoyance to be squished.
Craftsmen favor her as a deity, hoping for inspiration as they work metal and stone. Merchants often stamp a scorpion onto one side of their coin against the dangers of wanting too much and attracting bad luck, but always with the hope of earning more. Miners pray to her for safety in their long, lonely tunnels, and many wear crude stone scorpions as protection from her creatures. Delvers worship her for the hidden beauty she shows them, and desert nomads see her work in every dune. This ensures that - while the greatest concentration of her faithful is certainly within the bounds of her own kingdom - many more the world over at least occasionally nod to the Earth Goddess's wide reach.
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God’s Domain: The entrance to Karkorthi's realm is a desolate desert; scorched and barren with dunes that shift like ocean waves and winds so violent as to make the airborne grit tear flesh from bone. The mountains in the distance loom and belch heat and fire, but never seem to draw any closer. Her desert-dwelling faithful live here, but are immune to the hell that others find.
When one DOES finally reach her mountain lair (There is a secret to crossing the endless dunes much like the riddles that ancient heroes had to solve), it is a broad and gaping chasm that descends in darkness through the homes of chittering masses that never become visible but always draw closer. The walls close around travelers until they are buried entirely in a loamy grave. Through this last and final test of unknown terrors and smothering earth, her most favored are granted entrance.
The third circle of her realm is an infinite chamber of both hand-made and natural beauty. Cave water glides down pillars carved by the masters of the ages, veins of gold and silver run like rivers around natural formations. Precious jewels hang like stars and crystals sprout like flowers. Her people live here in hand-wrought villas of finest marble and gleaming sandstone, living in both leisure and studious industry as they are free to hone their arts to perfection as masons, miners, spelunkers, and jewel crafters.
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Avatar Name: Ebis'en
Avatar Appearance: http://designrshub.com/wp-content/uploa ... ations.jpg
Personality: Ebis'en is as stoic as his god. While most of the population of Rahab'Aran are Karkorthi-worshiping humans, Ebis'en is a Sithis-uhr, a dwindling race of rock-dwelling lizard-men said to be remnants of Karkorthi's creation pact with Ragon. When they turned their back on the Beast-god to follow Karkorthi and live in relative peace with their human converts, Ragon doomed them to extinction in his anger. Sithis-uhr now fight all the harder for the Goddess of the Earth's Heart, hoping her benevolence might be enough to save them. Ebis'en is a prime example of this fervor, and that he was chosen to be Her own avatar has renewed the hope and ferocity of the lizard-kin. He takes this responsibility seriously, and reflects the Earth's own patience and decisive confidence in his every action.
Magic Abilities:
Stone's Embrace - Ebis'en's skin is as hard as stone, they say, but that has yet to be tested, because little has made it through the ornate armor he wears. A gift from the Goddess, Herself, its metal is wrought from her most secret veins, and adorned with a silver scorpion with a ruby in its center.
Greed's Bite - Ebis'en wields a blade of black onyx blessed with Karkorthi's poisonous wrath. This venom can kill what the blade cannot weeks or even years later, causing its victims to writhe in the pain of the Goddess's anger.
Earthwalker - Sithis-uhr are all skilled tunnelers, but Ebis'en can speak to the rock itself and bid it let him pass, or to hinder the steps of his enemies with cracked roads and loose, biting shale.
Hero(es):
Darro Aro'a and Sanguine
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Rank/Reason: General of the Rahab'Aran armies. Diplomat.
Personality: Darro is an easy man to get along with. His patience and good humor encourage trust and put others at ease around him. But much like the God whom he serves, Darro's anger is something not wisely riled. He rides Sanguine, a great red Scorpion from a species that the Rahab'aran hold sacred. Sanguine is a vicious and cunning beast of great intellect. It's said that Darro actually understands the chittering hisses of his charge, and this makes the pair all the more worthy of due consideration.
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Likas Ven'ahen
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Rank/Reason: Guildmaster of the Craftsmen, Trade-Prince
Personality: A shrewd man who has spent his life devoted to Karkorthi's splendid gifts of wealth, Trade-Prince Likas relaxes in opulence and can afford to be as patient as he wants to be. He knows the bounty that his Goddess bestows is something that 'lesser cultures' would greedily fight and die for, and he uses that to his utmost advantage. That said, Likas is not driven by the same greed. Karkorthi's potent sting awaits those who grab too much too quickly. He is the man with whom outsiders barter with for access to the fine stone, metal, and gems of the Rahab'aran.
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Terrain Preference: In the sharp mountain cliffs and mesa-ringed canyons where Her majesty and power are on their most prominent display. (Think where the Mojave desert meets the Rocky Mountains)
Name of Kingdom/Empire: Rahab'aran
Capital: Korthi - Her principal city, and carved into the heart of a mountain. Its stone paths and buildings are wrought from a single peice of living earth, and its defenses are the formidable endurance of its very structure. It is home to Her principal temple, and many consider the climb to the perched city a sacred pilgrimage.
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Korthi
Major Cities: the Painted City - its actual name is long forgotten, traded for the affectionate nickname given for its vivid shades of red-orange rock and for the colorful citizenry. This is the primary trading hub of the Rahab'aran, at the foot of the Empire's mountainous terrain as it meets the more habbitable plains of 'softer folk'. Its masons and jewelcrafters are second to none, and have lent their skills to the Painted City's buildings - most of which are carved directly into the rocky canyon walls.
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The Painted City
Khore'bal - (Pronounced 'core-ball') Another mountainous fortress of a city, Khore is a steep hold home to Her army. Its unforgiving crags can cut skin to ribbons where they havent been carved smooth, and its interior caves are known to be home to great stone worms that are said to be sustained on the corpses of those accused of crimes against Karkorthi Herself.
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Khore'bal
Paneel - A southern city built as terraced stone farms and markets. This simple sort of place hides a massive cavern beneath its crops and carins; its cavernous underbelly is the primary breeding ground of the Rahab'aran's sacred scorpion mounts.
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Paneel
Society: Rahab'aran are mostly human with a scattering of other races, including the near-extinct Sithis-uhr explained before. For the most part, this empire is a society of masons and miners, exporting their earth-wrought wares. Their soldiering population is healthy, however, guarding the wealth that too many others would seek to make their own without honest effort.
Much of Rahab'aran is content to let the squabbles of other countries come and go, as their Goddess teaches patience, secure in the knowledge that the Earth endures beneath them all, and for always. This patient attitude lends itself well to negotiations, and the Rahab'aran stand ready as a neutral ground for bickering nobilities as long as both parties respect the people of the Earth's Heart.
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Other:
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A typical Sithis-uhr. These cold-blooded lizard-men are tribal and ground-dwelling in nature, preffering to spend their days lying on a warm rock or burried in the soft earth. They tend great herds of cattle above their burrows, feasting on bloodied meats that mark them for touched by Ragon. Strong of body and quick of intelligence, their stout claws meant for digging make fine weapons to rend the flesh of their enemies. They are not above devouring the flesh of Men. In fact, they find it pleasantly fatty.
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Ragon's Hand
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When Ashariel was still new and Karkorthi was making her mark, she found quickly that others coveted the shiny baubles she had carefully woven into the tapestry of the rock; mining great ugly holes in her beautiful work and destroying whole mountains in ugly piles. It angered her greatly, and in her rage, she approached Ragon for assistance.
He agreed to help her, eager for the opportunity to bleed mortal weakness, and crafted for her many frightening and deadly horrors to fill her caverns and mountains. Protectors of her treasures and punishers of those who dug too deeply, too greedily. Worms that could move through the earth in silence and devour all in their path. Blind spiders that wove miles of web in their tunnels. Others so deadly that no tale has yet escaped of their ferocity.
His price, of course, would be that his creatures be given leave to hunt the mortal prey, even if it meant that it was her faithful that occasionally bled. She agreed to this, and the darkness of the world was filled with enough horror to see to it the mortal races lived close to the safety of the sun, and no longer carelessly delved into her heart.
