Note: If you like the idea of Angry Table Tales (see below) and are interested in either more Angryverse Lore or more Angry War Stories, let me know in the comments.

Time for something a little different. I know you were expecting a thing about Tarot and D&D today. At least, I know that now. Problem is that I kind of forgot I’d promised that when I started writing this article. I lost track of my content schedule and started writing the wrong article.

But this ain’t that wrong article either. Because, after I put a lot of work and three thousand words into that wrong article — which I thought was what I was supposed to be writing — I discovered it was just kind of s$&%. It was mostly just a bunch of ranty garbage. Nothing interesting. Nothing useful. So I scrapped it.

And then things got totally derailed by Circumstances Beyond My Control™.

And that’s why you’re reading about the Gods of the Angryverse today. Because that’s something lots of you have been begging me to write and because I had a hole in my schedule and I needed to fill it. Fast.

Don’t worry. That Tarot thing is still happening. It’s back on the schedule and I won’t forget this time. I promise. Meanwhile, enjoy some Angryverse Religious Lore.

Introducing Angry Table Tales

Everyone’s always got an opinion about what I should write next. And no one’s shy about sharing them. So I get a crap-ton of questions, feedback, requests for advice, and topic proposals. And I do my best to pay attention to that s$&%. As much as I can anyway. Because I get a lot of feedback and I can only write so much.

One class of questions I tend to ignore is questions about my personal game and my personal game world. Personally, I don’t see much value in telling war stories or sharing a bunch of dumb lore and backstory when I could be giving actual, useful, actionable advice. Or writing new rules and hacks.

But y’all won’t leave me alone about that s$&%. And I get it, okay? I accept there’s value in inspiration and exemplification. All that crap. And I know it’s entertaining. Gamers love reading about worlds and games.

So, today, I’m trying out a new format. A new class of articles. I’m sharing an Angry Table Tale. I’m going to tell you a story from my home game or share some lore from my semi-homebrewed default D&D setting — the Angryverse — with a few notes about why — and how — I did — or do — what I did — or does. If that makes sense.

Today, I’m sharing some Angryverse Lore. Specifically, I’m responding to the huge number of requests I’ve gotten to talk about the Gods of the Angryverse. A stupid question I can’t answer.

The Angry Gods

Here’s the thing. I can’t tell you about the Angryverse gods because that’s not how the Angryverse works. The Angryverse doesn’t handle religion the way D&D handles it. Or fails to handle it.

Now, I don’t want to write a long rant about why religion sucks in D&D. But it does. And that’s because the default worlds of D&D don’t have religion. They have gods. But no religion. I call it — and I know this will piss some of you off — I call it religion for atheists. And I’m not saying that to make any value judgments about anyone’s beliefs or non-beliefs or whatever. Nor am I saying that to suggest you must be an atheist to play D&D or that D&D will make you an atheist or anything like that.

The thing is, D&D doesn’t want anything to do with religion. It never did. Gygax was clear about that when he invented it. And every time D&D has dallied with religion, it’s caused trouble. When it comes to religion, you can’t win. Either you’re pissing off the small minority of the faithful who are a bunch of overly moral, censorious zealots or you’re pissing off the small minority of the atheistic who are a bunch of overly offended, censorious zealots.

Which, by the way, means I’m very much aware of the minefield I’m wading into here. Which is why I’m going to moderate the hell out of the comment area. And I will lock it down if I have to.

Here’s the thing: I know some of my readers are deeply faithful and may take umbrage with my overly academic and historical perspective on religion. And I know some of my readers have strong opinions about the negative aspects of religion and will take offense at my treating the subject with even-handed respect. Such is life. I also know some people are going to be pissed off just because I’m daring to write a moral code. But I’ll get to that.

Point is, what you’ve got to understand is that D&D doesn’t have religion in it. It has a pile of gods that are basically just game mechanics. At their least, the gods are just class features for clerics and paladins listed on a spreadsheet. At most, they’ve got stat blocks and they’re just really powerful, magical creatures no different from any other really powerful, magical creatures. They’re just the stuff you kill when you hit 20th-level and orcs aren’t enough of a challenge anymore.

The Angryverse, meanwhile, has religion. Actually, it has religions. Several. And they’re important. They shape the cultures, values, and societies around them. Because that’s how it works. There are several major human religions, each of which lies at the heart of a different human culture. The dwarves have a religion that shapes their culture. Orcs too. And yes, most of the non-human races are monocultural. Get over it.

Today, I’m going to give you a brief overview of one of the human religions. But before I give you the lore, you’ve got to understand some of how this religion s$&% actually works in the Angryverse.

Finding My Religions

So what’s a religion? In the Angryverse, anyway? A religion is just a worldview. An understanding of how the cosmos works. And how best to live in it. Some religions are polytheistic or pantheistic, some are monotheistic, and some are nontheistic. Doesn’t matter. Because the gods actually ain’t the important part. All the gods in D&D? Those spreadsheets and lists? In the Angryverse, they’re all part of one religion. One faith. Or they would be. But I don’t use D&D’s crappy gods.

At the start of the Common Era, Judaism existed alongside classical Roman polytheism and a whole bunch of mystery cults and the entire hodgepodge we incorrectly call the druidic faith. Meanwhile, some guy was busy laying the foundations of Christianity. Meanwhile meanwhile, across a couple of mountain ranges, the Mahayana movement was establishing the basic tenets of Buddhism as an alternative take on the universe to the fifteen-hundred-year-old Vedic faith.

And it be like that in the Angryverse. At last count, I knew of five or six major religions in the Angryverse. I’ll probably discover more. Most of them are mostly human because humans are varied and multicultural. And because they’re mercurial. And they have short life spans. This means their social and cultural institutions don’t endure like those of elves and dwarves. Either they fall apart after a few generations or else they evolve so rapidly and so drastically they’re unrecognizable.

That’s humans for you.

Point is, there’s a bunch of religions in the Angryverse. Which might lead you to ask a really stupid question…

So What’s the Truth

Since I created the Angryverse and since there’s a bunch of game-mechanical s$&% attached to all this crap, you probably think there’s some objective reality behind it all, right? A Truth with a capital T. Like, sure, the people living inside the Angryverse might not see it. But as the creator-author, I know what’s really right.

I don’t. I have some theories. But I don’t know what’s really true. And I don’t want to. I’ve purposely made the truth unknowable. Which probably sounds bonkers. It’s my world, right? I’ve got to run it. I should know how it works.

Thing is, I know what I have to know to run the world. I know, for example, what divine magic is. Because I’ve got adjudicate that s$&%. And, for the good of running a good fantasy game — because I don’t want to run a crap game — I decided a few things. For instance, gods don’t have stat blocks. They ain’t game constructs. They exist separately from the cosmos. The players can’t meet them or speak to them and they’ll never act directly on the world. Their agents? Sure. Angels and s$&%? Those are fine. But the gods ain’t part of the game world. They’re above it.

Also, the gods are forces of order and good in the cosmos. Generally. Barring a few, specific, carefully chosen exceptions.

Actually, I’m lying. Things are a little more complicated. Because there’s a single religion that breaks all these rules.

Nature versus Nurture

Let me first distinguish between two broad kinds of religions. Naturalistic and moralistic. Naturalistic religions are all about explaining natural forces, impulses, and behaviors. All the fun, ancient, polytheistic mythologies we love cribbing s$&% from? The ones with sun gods and gods of magic and gods of death and war? Those are naturalistic. And they’re all about understanding how the world is. And not dying from it. Mainly by flying beneath its radar. Or, failing that, by appeasement.

I lump all the naturalistic religions in the Angryverse together into one broad religion. Paganism. Primalism. Shamanism. Druidism. The Old Gods. The Old Ways. It’s got lots of names because it’s got lots of versions. But they’re all basically the same too. If two Pagans met, they’d probably have completely different lists of gods. Or spirits. Or whatever. But they’d find their lists have a lot of overlap. Maybe they’d get along. Accept they each have their own names for the same gods. Or maybe they fight it out to figure out whose gods are stronger.

Moralistic religion’s a different creature. There’s several. And they’re not really about naming and describing natural forces. Sure, they do describe them, but they’re more concerned with morality and philosophy. Teaching mortals how to live. How to hold civilized society together. That’s what I meant when I said the gods are forces of order and good. The moralistic religions of the Angryverse are all instruction manuals for civilization. Basically.

If you strip away the romance and the magic anyway.

You might be interested to know those naturalistic gods? They do exist. But they’re not gods. Even though people in the world sometimes call them gods. They’re actually manifestations of a pantheistic soup of sorts. The kind of thing an evil corporation would mine and turn into electricity if I was running a Final Fantasy game. But that’s a whole other story.

Point is, in the Angryverse, if you want to worship anything that looks like a traditional mythological or D&D god — Ra or Apollo or Tezcatlipoca or Pelor or Amaunator or Iomedae — you’re following the Old Gods. Which means you can’t be a cleric. You’re a druid.

But I digress…

Not Knowing is Caring

As I said, I’ve got a few different moralistic religions competing for the souls of my imaginary citizens. And I don’t know which one’s really real. Which one is right. Except I do. I know they’re all right. They must be. Otherwise, divine magic doesn’t work. Problem is, they’re all at least somewhat contradictory. Otherwise, there’d just be one religion. So how can they all be right if they’re also contradictory?

I don’t know.

First, I do know they’re not as incompatible as they seem. They’ve got a lot of the same basic ideas at their cores. After all, order and good are order and good. And civilized life can only work so many ways. There’s certain things that every civilization needs to keep from falling into chaos.

So, it’s likely that the major faiths in the Angryverse — except for a tiny number of isolated faiths I know to be false for reasons — all the big faiths are just interpretations of something so big and so complicated humans can’t possibly understand it. So, naturally, details are going to get a little jumbled up. And things are going to come out wrong. And, of course, I can’t write anything so big and complicated humans can’t possibly understand it. Because I am human. Therefore, I have to accept I can’t understand it.

Crazy as this s$&% sounds, it’s vital to making religion feel… well… religious. People piss and moan all the time that religion in D&D doesn’t feel… right. It feels off. Part of that’s just that, in the real world, religion is a hugely important social institution that has shaped the values of every culture on earth and affects every one of us. Even if we personally reject it. D&D doesn’t want anything to do with that s$&%. So religion’s just a thing that powers clerics and occasionally provides a plot point as necessary.

But a part of it’s also that GMs and worldbuilders write religions the way they write everything. As lists of objective, magical facts. As a list of truths. Well, that ain’t how religion works. However faithful you are there’s stuff you don’t quite get. There’s questions. Doubts. And that ain’t just about religion. It’s about moral philosophy in general. However strongly you believe whatever you believe about right and wrong, eventually, you hit an inconsistency. A point of confusion. Or doubt. You end up having to question yourself. To take something on faith. “I know this is the right thing because I feel it in my heart.” That kind of crap.

If you’re intellectually honest with yourself, your understanding of everything that’s not math will be imperfect. There’s always holes. Over time, you’ll fill in the holes and smooth out the imperfections, but you’ll also keep finding more holes. More imperfections. That’s life.

And that’s why I refuse to explain the Angryverse perfectly. Not even to myself. There’s questions I refuse to answer. For example, I know — because game mechanics demand it — that the souls of the dead stick around in some sort of purgatorial state for a while after death. But at some point, they disappear. They go away. Forever. Where do they go? Why? I don’t know. And I never will.

Obviously, I’ve got to run this world. And I’ve got to run it consistently enough to feel real. To make sense. So I make sure there’s more compatibilities than conflicts between the big faiths. I’m careful to make sure I can spot enough overlaps that the two faiths can exist in the same world without breaking the world in my brain. Accept they’re probably looking at the same things but they’re looking through different lenses. Or funhouse mirrors. And they’re focusing on different details.

Fortunately, the D&D universe is full of plenty of things that are facts about reality. Like devils and demons and angels and good and evil and law and chaos. Plenty of s$&% that must be true across the board. I’m fine as long as I never say anything crazy like, “what if devils are misunderstood good guys” or “maybe morality isn’t a thing but just a matter of perspective” or “how about a god that’s just a powerful, extradimensional being so far beyond mortals that they’re not even aware of mortals but nonetheless are anathema to mortal existence” or “maybe gods are just 20th-level archmages that found Lordsouls or Elden Rings or whatever.”

Fortunately, I like running an actual, good game. So I’m not inclined to say any of that stupid bulls$&%.

On Titles and Classes and S$&%

I promise I’m almost done with this explanatory crap. But I want to lay out a couple other things about religion in the Angryverse.

First, there’s a difference between divine magic and primal magic. Clerics and paladins use divine magic. Druids and rangers use primal magic. There’s no mechanical difference. But they are incompatible. I just didn’t feel like writing a whole other magic system. D&D’s magic systems are beyond help anyway.

Second, it takes more than faith to wield divine magic. See, pretty much everyone’s got faith. At least everyone in the human world. And the dwarf world. And most of the sentient humanoid world. And some of the nonhumanoid world. But not the elf world. Faith’s a big part of life in the Angryverse.

But even members of the clergy — priests — don’t automatically get divine magic. And it ain’t something you get just by training. Divine magic is granted by the Powers What Be for reasons only they know. It’s only granted to the faithful and it can be ungranted. But it’s rarely ungranted. Divine spellcasters ain’t stripped of their powers for mistakes or lapses in judgment or even for crises of faith. Mortals be mortal. They ain’t perfect. They f$&% up.

Point is, divine spellcasters are rare. Even amongst the clergy. That ain’t quite true of primal spellcasters, by the way. Druidism isn’t easy or common, but it’s way more a matter of training than faith. That’s another story though.

As for the clergy, broadly speaking, there’s two kinds of priests in the world. And priest is really just job title. It’s someone who provides for the spiritual needs of a community. And presides over religious ceremonies. And takes care of religious spaces.

Ordained priests are formally educated and granted their title by some sort of church hierarchy. Outside of cities and big towns, that isn’t common in the Angryverse. At least not in the Age of Darkness. Lay priests aren’t formally recognized by any authority. They got their training through an apprenticeship. Usually to another lay priest. Rural villages far from the major cities are usually presided over by lay priests who train their successors.

An apprentice priest — formal or otherwise — is usually called an acolyte.

And priests usually have titles specific to their faiths.

Clerics can start as lay priests or ordained priests or acolytes. They might not be priests at all. A faithful soldier might be called to serve the Powers What Be as easily as any trained, ordained priest.

My current campaign’s got a cleric. He was raised in a small village. He served the village’s lay priest as an acolyte. The priest’s official title is Speaker, by the way. But the PC went off to a big city for formal religious education. He’s an ordained priest now. And, at some point, he also manifested divine power by the will of the gods. In this case, the Vasaar. The Prophets. Thus, he is an ordained Speaker for the Prophets and also a divine spellcaster. A cleric.

This s$&%’s true with knights and paladins too. With one little wrinkle. See, a knight’s a member of the lesser nobility who swears an oath of fealty to a lord. An anointed knight is a warrior of any class who swears to uphold the code of one of the world’s knightly orders. Provided that the oath is witnessed and accepted by an ordained priest or another anointed knight. A paladin is an anointed knight so strong in their faith that the Powers What Be granted them divine magical power.

Anointed knights usually have specific titles depending on the order they serve.

Apprentice knights are called squires.

In my current campaign, the party’s paladin served as squire to an anointed knight. A Crusader of the Argent Mantle. He — the PC — swore an oath to serve the Order of the Argent Mantle. It was witnessed and accepted by his master — on the master’s deathbed — and thus the PC is now an anointed knight himself. A Crusader of the Argent Mantle. Further, on receiving anointment, the PC manifested divine magical powers.

Both the cleric — the Speaker — and the paladin — the Crusader — are members of the Vasaari Faith. The Church of the Prophets.

The Vasaari Faith

The Vasaari Faith — the Church of the Prophets — is one of the major religions in the Angryverse. It’s based on the teachings of several prophets — duh — who traveled the mortal world centuries ago. These prophets — the Prophets — were apparently angelic beings — Vasaar — who took mortal forms to bring their teachings to the world. Initially, their travels went unnoticed by any whose lives they didn’t personally touch. But then, the stories of their lives appeared conveniently in written form in a single tome called The Books of the Prophets.

And when I say it appeared conveniently, I mean that literally. The tome containing the compiled Books of the Prophets appeared during a solar eclipse on the altar in the Great Temple of the Sun in the Zethinian Imperial capital. And soon thereafter, the Vasaari Faith became the official faith of the Zethinian Empire. It spread through Imperial lands and beyond. Today, the Vasaari Faith is the predominant religion throughout Central Zethinia, on the Circle Sea, and in much of the Western Kingdoms and the Sunderlands.

In the Age of Empires, the Vasaari Faith became a powerful social institution with a complex hierarchy. When the Empire fell, the church became fractured. Diffuse. There’s technically a central church hierarchy headed by the Great Speaker in Zethinia, but most churches operate independently these days, either under regional or local hierarchies or no hierarchy to speak of. Most rural localities are tended by the laity. Meanwhile, several small abbeys and monasteries exist across the land.

Despite this, the Vasaari traditions and beliefs are fairly uniform and the clergy is pretty easygoing about the whole hierarchy and laity thing. Some of the big-city ordained priests turn their noses up at the village lay priests and some of the laity view the overly ritualized practices of the city priests with disdain, but for the most part, everyone’s on the same side.

The Books of the Prophets

In the year 128 Z.E., during a solar eclipse, a high priest of the Zethinian sun god discovered a book sitting on the altar in the Great Temple of the Sun in the Zethnian capital.

The book was actually a compilation of five scriptures. The five Books of the Prophets. The Book of the King and His Knights, the Book of the Watchers, the Book of the Twins, the Book of the Wanderer, and an unnamed book that has since been dubbed the Book of the Stranger.

The first four books described the wanderings and teachings of the titular prophets who had apparently visited the world about a half-century before. The Prophets performed acts of kindness and heroism, performed some miracles, and provided advice and instruction to the people they encountered.

Except for the Stranger.

The Prophets themselves were revealed to be mortal avatars of angelic beings called Vasaar who served a heretofore unknown deity described only as The Creator.

The Creator and the Vasaar

The Books actually say little about the Creator and the Vasaar. The Creator created the cosmos at the beginning of time. All of it. Everything. And then, the Creator withdrew. Whether the Creator withdrew out of disappointment with the mortals of the cosmos or whether the Creator intended to withdraw is not made clear.

To watch over the cosmos, the Creator brought forth a host of angelic beings. The Vasaar. The Vasaar were not to interfere directly in the evolution of the cosmos.

It’s implied the Creator will return someday. Or perhaps the Vasaar want the Creator to return and are attempting to draw the Creator back by sending the world along the right path. Perhaps the Creator is definitely going to return and the Vasaar want the Creator to be pleased with the cosmos. It’s all unclear.

What is clear, however, is that the Creator and the Vasaar want mortals to flourish. To thrive. And they’ve got some instructions for making that happen.

The Prophets

The Vasaar left the mortals of the world alone for ages. Mostly. It’s hinted that Vasaar have visited the world before and may even have enjoyed worship as deities by ancient races. But the Books of the Prophets describe a recent visit from eight powerful Vasaar. Perhaps the most powerful and the highest of Vasaar.

The Book of the King and His Knights

The first of the Books details the story of a king wandering in self-imposed exile. The king abdicated his throne and left his Sunderland kingdom under the rule of a Zethinian governor he judged to be fair, wise, and trustworthy. The king then traveled the borderlands of Zethinia and the Sunderlands, doing good deeds and fighting evil.

During his travels, the king encountered three mortals of pure heart and anointed each as a knight in his service. On his death, he pronounced the knight’s saints and bade them go forth and start knightly orders. As saints, when the mortal knights passed, they would be welcomed into the Celestial Host.

The Book of the King and His Knights focuses on the virtues most strongly associated with holding civilization together. The duty of the strong to protect the weak and rule justly and fairly. And the duty of the weak to respect just authority. His knights exemplified virtues of order and good: mercy and compassion, truth and justice, and courage and sacrifice.

The Book of the King and His Knights is the longest of the Books of the Prophets and contains the strongest moral lessons of all the Books. The King is the most revered and respected of all the Prophets in human lands.

The Knights founded three great orders. The Knight of Mercy founded the Hospitallers who protected the roads and travelers and cared for the poor and the infirm. The Knight of Truth founded the Justiciars who brought outlaws to justice. And the Knight of Courage founded the Crusaders who sought and destroyed evil. Especially monstrous and supernatural evil.

The Book of the Watchers

The second and next-longest book describes the travels of three women wandering the Western Kingdoms after a tragedy. The Elder, the Mother, and the Maiden represent three generations of the same family. And they set to wander after the Mother’s husband — and the Maiden’s father — dies tragically in an apparently senseless accident.

Where the King and his Knights are dynamic figures, the Watchers are passive. As their names imply. They provide wisdom, guidance, comfort, and care wherever they go, but rarely take direct action. There is a clear focus on accepting one’s place. As part of the cosmos, as part of a community, and as part of a family. Acceptance and humility are of the utmost importance. As is marking the important milestones of life: adulthood, marriage, childbirth, and death. The Watchers are thus invoked during all such rites.

At times, the Watchers provide glimpses into the future, but always with the lesson that the future is unchanging. The Elder is especially prescient and seems to represent both fate and death. The fickle Maiden seemingly represents chance and fortune. With the caveat that while luck and fortune seem random, they too are cosmic forces and must be accepted for what they are. The Mother, the most beloved of the Watchers, teaches the importance of the bonds that tie us together and help us find our way through the inevitable hard times.

The Book of the Twins

The third book is fairly short and describes the travels of a twin sister and brother. Both grew up in a large, wealthy city in Central Zethinia. The sister is called the Librarian. She was a member of cult of a witch goddess and maintained the cult’s secret library. The brother is called the Smith and forged arms and armor for the Zethinian Imperial garrison in the city.

The Twins left their lives behind for largely unclear reasons, though each seemed unsatisfied with their positions and each was driven to bring their knowledge and craft to the wider world. Between the two of them, they teach the importance of diligence and sacrifice as the path to mastery. The Librarian espouses the importance of seeking wisdom first by listening and then by questioning, which is reflected in the rejection of her cult in favor of faith in the Creator. She concluded that the Creator’s teachings — for example, those about hard work, diligence, understanding, and then teaching — would lead to a better world than the strange rites and secret hoarding of her cult. The Smith, meanwhile, exemplified the struggle, pain, and risk that comes with the mastery of any skill as well as the patience required.

The Book of the Wanderer

The most popular of the Books of the Prophets — especially among common folk and children — describes the exploits of a heroine who seems more suited to a tale from the Age of Legends than a collection of religious teachings. The book describes the exploits of a heroic explorer traveling throughout Zethinia and along the Circle Sea.

But she is nonetheless a moral hero. Like any good explorer, she follows her heart. But, unlike the larger-than-life heroes of yore, she is neither excessive nor indulgent. She tends her body, mind, and soul well and frequently reminds those she meets that if you keep goodness in your heart, you can trust your heart to lead you to goodness. Apart from her good-hearted heroism the Wanderer delights in experiencing the wonders of the world and in leaving each place she visits a little better for her presence.

The Book of the Stranger

Of all the Books of the Prophets, the Book of the Stranger is the strangest. Obviously. It doesn’t follow the narrative form of the other books, but rather presents a series of disconnected and disordered vignettes. Short scenes. Glimpses into moments in other people’s stories. Many of those other stories — but not all — are detailed in the other Books of the Prophets. They present scenes from the other books from a different perspective or reveal side incidents and hidden details.

No amount of cross-referencing the Book of the Stranger with the other Books has revealed any details about the Stranger’s identity. Hence the name Stranger.

While many of the passages simply offer extra details not found in the main stories of the Books, a few highlight failings and weaknesses of the Prophets. Or even offer contrary lessons. There is a passage in which the King’s knights stand against him and prevent him from an albeit minor abuse of authority. In another, the Mother curses the Creator under her breath upon seeing a mass grave for the victims of a plague. Several depict the Wanderer doubting the righteousness of her own actions. And the Twins’ coldness toward each other behind closed doors is highlighted. Some of the passages show the Stranger stirring up trouble. Sometimes for good, such as to help a Prophet teach a hard-headed mortal an important lesson, and sometimes for ill.

There seems to be no consistent pattern to the Book of the Stranger at all. No consistent set of moral lessons. At times, it humanizes the Prophets — odd given that they are revealed to be Vasaar in mortal form — at times it elevates them. Sometimes, the Stranger sows doubts about the moral lessons of the Prophets. And sometimes, the Stranger shows the painful consequences of disregarding those same lessons.

That said, the Stranger is neither immoral nor amoral. And, in some ways, the Book of the Stranger is the most important of all. It is the Book of Stranger that reveals the ascension of each Prophet on their death, showing them to be angelic beings and not mortals. Moreover, the final passages of the Book of the Stranger resolve the mystery of the Books of the Prophets very existence.

In the final passages, the Stranger moves about the world, gathering the writings from several dozen mortal sources and carefully compiling them into a single tome. And then, under cover of supernatural darkness, the Stranger steals into the Temple of the Sun in the Zethinian capital, leaves the tome on the altar, and then ascends to the Celestial Realm.

The Daimaar

The Creator, the Vasaar, and the Prophets are not the only supernatural entities described in the Books of the Prophets. Brief, passing mentions are made of three dark figures against whom the Vasaar remain ever vigilant. The King warns his Knights to be ever ready for battle against the Usurper. The Books of the Twins and the Wanderer both mention a figure who goes among mortals known as the Deceiver. And, in the Book of the Watchers, the Elder makes a disturbing mention of a figure called the Destroyer.

But no one would speak of such figures in polite company.