The great Mother Tree, the Goddess of Life and Earth, things that grow and nature itself, had directly or indirectly offended the God of Spirit, the Lord of Dreams, the King of that which resided in men's hearts, their souls.
Both were essential to life in similar yet totally opposite ways, one was the ethereal counterpart of the other yet very different from the physical, female version. It was a cruel twist of fate but it had many consequences, a threat of war had been formally issued by the Lord of Dreams and it seemed that he meant to make good on it.
His people had a new beast of war and new warriors to ride them, a chosen few for there were not many of the Nightmare horses. They were unusual and not of this Eden, Aegis had lacked the power to make them en-mass but he had ended up with a solid one hundred of them. It took time but not a terribly long amount to have the one hundred riders to match. The unusual thing though was as time passed there was still one hundred, it seemed their numbers neither grew nor shrank. An unsettling but divine fact that his people noticed.
As they noticed the shift of gender policy, male priests becoming very rare became a sign to the people that men were meant for war and women for the priesthood. Beside who best to govern breeding lines than women themselves? It made sense and few if any men were feeling the call to serve their god as a priest now.
The women had a new charge, breeding, the divine mandate that a woman should aspire for at least five children was a demanding one and not all women could manage it. Some did die due to the rigors of childbirth over and over again, while some prospered immensely as they seemed naturally adept at having children safely.
This did lead to the creation of a sub duty to female priests though, they were slowly becoming self taught and trained as professional midwives and as pre-natal doctors. It became the sign of a fine priestess if she could successful keep alive as many of her charges as possible and deliver the most healthy babies.
The Nightmare Riders were a different thing all together, the Lords of the Warrior Caste. They were both revered and shunned for their unnatural beasts scared even the faithful and all knew they made the dreams worse, they were not called Nightmares for anything and the Dread Riders themselves as they came to be known were worse. They rarely spoke, they kept to each other for company and did not mix with those beneath them. The also had a habit to keeping nocturnal time schedules and seemed to delight in riding in the skies at night for no other reason than they simply could.
It was an industrious time for Aegis and his people, the Caste system had become more rigid but with it the advantage of people trained from birth to do a single task. The development of the people sped up greatly and as did their work, with dedicated builders and craftsmen, soon they had artisans in every field and finally their great work was done. Dremur, the city was completed and it stood as a testament to what man could do. It was perhaps the greatest city in the world currently as the artisans of Aegis had truly impressive building skills.
The world continued though and it remained to be seen how the other gods would respond to Aegis' declarations against his sister. So far the rock worms she had created had stuck to the mountain range they were created in and shown no interest in going anywhere else, yet they were no doubt dangerous to any who decided to live in those mountains.
The Death God dreamed in his lair below.
(Aegis remains at rank 2 belief power, map updated)
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