This post is inspired by Marc Bailey's comments on the entry for Artela'kema in the Fans of Metamor City Facebook page. In response to the revelation that there were two nature goddesses, Artela (for cooperation/mutualism) and Lilith (for competition/predation), he wrote:
"Interesting that there is a duality. Most hunting deities represent the act of hunting as a cooperative act. The idea being that the conflict is only an illusion. The underlying truth is that the hunt is an agreement between predator and prey. This is why most hunter Gods have aspects of the hunted animals (antlers are perhaps most common). Cernunnos is hunter, hound, and stag. He is life and death in one."
This highlights one of the key differences between Metamor theology and that of most polytheistic/pantheistic religious systems. Most such religions see a balance of opposing forces as being contained within the deity who represents those forces. In Metamor's pantheon, however, there is a division between the Gods of Light (Aedra Lords) and the Gods of Shadow (Daedra Lords), and this division expresses itself in the relationships between the gods and their portfolios in the two factions.
Every Aedra Lord has a brother or sister among the Daedra Lords. In most cases, the Aedra Lord has a portfolio that represents the principles of superego, honor, restraint, order, control, or light, while his/her opposing sibling represents principles of id, selfishness, release, chaos, lack of control, or darkness. There are exceptions to this, but those are the general trends.
The Aedra/Daedra sibling pairs and their portfolios are listed below. Gods marked with an asterisk (*) are deceased and have been replaced by former mortals who took their power.
AEDRA < … … … … > DAEDRA
*Kammoloth, King of Heaven < … … … … > Ba'al, Prince of Shadow
(Hearth, Hospitality, Celebration) < … … … … > (Dark Revels)
Akkala, Queen of Heaven < … … … … > Tallakath, Lord of Pestilence
(Healing, Purity) < … … … … > (Disease and Dying)
Samekkh, Lord of Light < … … … … > Klepnos the Trickster
(Knowledge through Order) < … … … … > (Knowledge through Disorder)
Dokorath, Lord of War < … … … … > *Revonos, Lord of Rage
(Honor, War, Valor) < … … … … > (Rage, Murder, Treachery)
Velena, Lady of Love & Beauty < … … … … > Suspira, Lady of Passion
(Love, Beauty, Truth) < … … … … > (Lust, Fertility, Desire)
Dvalin, Lord of Weather < … … … … > Agemnos, Lord of Avarice
(Agriculture, Wine, Weather) < … … … … > (Cities, Trade, Wealth)
Artela, Lady of Mercy < … … … … > *Lilith, Mistress of the Hunt
(Nature, Mutualism) < … … … … > (Nature, Predation)
Yajiit, Lady of Fire < … … … … > Oblineth, Mistress of Ice
(Sun, Fire, Summer) < … … … … > (Outer Space, Ice, Winter)
Wvelkim, Lord of the Seas < … … … … > Nocturna, Lady of Omens
(Seas, Marine Life, Sailing) < … … … … > (Moon, Dreams, Psychopomp)
Among both the Aedra and Daedra Lords, the 9th member of their Pantheon is the oddball who doesn't really fit. Wvelkim is a chaotic, tempestuous deity prone to fits of rage and spite; he would belong more with the daedra, except that he's too cranky to ever bow his knee to Prince Ba'al. On the other side, Nocturna is a wise, sober and kind-hearted being who long ushered the spirits of the righteous dead from Earth to a place of comfort and rest in her demesne, the First Hell. Nocturna was always spurned and belittled by the other Daedra Lords, and since the Great Fall she has been an ally of Majestrix Kyia and Merai Starchild.
Samekkh and Klepnos deserve special mention. These two brothers are both gifted with prophetic insight, the ability to project their consciousness back into the past and forward into the future. They differ radically, however, in their interpretations of what they see:
- Samekkh believes that there is one true path that history must be kept on, and that deviating away from this path in one direction or another will cause the universe to collapse into chaos, devoured by the Not-Reality known as the Outer Darkness or the Underworld.
- Klepnos, by contrast, believes that the universe is ever branching into an infinite array of new possibilities, and that it is this diversity that gives reality resilience and robustness against the unraveling chaos of the Outer Darkness. In Klepnos's view, attempting to eliminate possible futures and restrain the world to one path is destabilizing it and eliminating the protections that shield it from collapse.
Both Samekkh and Klepnos can perceive a time in the near future when all prophecy fails, and beyond which the future is unknowable. Both of them believe this is because of the risk that the universe will be consumed by the Outer Darkness beyond this point. The question of what to do about it is, of course, their chief point of disagreement, and given that they can't both be right, the future of the universe may hang on which one of them is believed by those who have the power to act…
