Thirty-four beings of gathered mana, formed in the dark between stars. They are not creators. They are not immortal. One was destroyed at the Battle of Fort Hope. The rest endure, and the faithful call them gods, and the gods do not correct them.
The universe was not created by divine hands. It was born from the collision of two dying realities, and the beings mortals call gods simply woke up inside it.
The gods of Mazariim are not gods at all. They are entities, beings formed from the slow gathering and clumping of magical energy in the vast emptiness between stars. Mana, one of the fundamental forces of the universe alongside gravity, attracts and accumulates over immense spans of time. Some entities took thousands of years to form. Others took billions. The process is as natural as the condensation of gas into a star, and just as impersonal. No hand guided it. No purpose ordained it. The energy gathered, and eventually something woke inside it.
Entities are not immortal. They are timeless, a distinction that matters. They do not age, do not require food or water or sleep, and they will not die of old age. But anything capable of dissipating or destroying their gathered energy can kill them, and entities that fight each other can destroy a rival permanently. Quarzel, the Warlord, was obliterated at the Battle of Fort Hope in 1 BW. He did not retreat to a plane to recover. He did not disperse and re-form. He ceased to exist. The faithful who prayed to him that night received no answer, and none has come since.
While an entity forms, its consciousness develops in a kind of slumber, gathering wisdom through uninterrupted thought and meditation in ways that mortal minds cannot grasp. Something eventually triggers the awakening. The passing of sufficient time. The proximity of another entity. The detonation of a nearby star. If the entity carries enough magical mass, it will form an extra-dimensional plane upon waking, a pocket dimension shaped by the conditions near the entity or by forces entirely random in nature and physical law. Entities of lesser mass settle instead upon existing planes, carving smaller realms within them. Entities that arrive from other universes, regardless of their original strength, never form their own planes and are considered lesser entities in the cosmology of Mazariim.
When an entity wishes to act in the material world, it cannot travel there directly. Its magical mass binds it to its plane the way gravity binds a star to its orbit. Instead, it sends a portion of its energy in the form of an avatar, a projection that carries only a fraction of the entity's true power. Destroying an avatar does not kill the entity behind it, but it wounds it. The entity must wait one hundred and one years to gather enough energy to breach the barrier between worlds again and send another. Some races, the elves foremost among them, have hosted an avatar among their people for generations. Others have never seen one and know the divine only through prayer, granted spells, and the old stories told by priests who themselves have never stood in the presence of what they worship.
In a universe born from collision rather than creation, the existence of a soul requires explanation, and the Church of Mau the Oracle has provided one for thousands of years. Mau was the first entity to awaken, roughly two billion years before the present age. His consciousness, expanding across spacetime, interacted with the magical force in a manner similar to the observer effect in quantum physics. The act of observation collapsed potential into form. Mana bonded to the bodies and minds of self-aware sentient beings across distant galaxies, creating a copy of each mind stored in a magical matrix. From a philosophical standpoint, a person is the sum of their experiences, and this ever-growing lattice of magical energy mirrors those experiences precisely.
Upon death, the matrix separates from the body and drifts toward greater concentrations of magical energy, drawn by the same attractive force that formed the entities themselves. The soul passes through transitive planes and eventually merges with an entity, losing its individuality but becoming part of the whole. Entities are thought to attract souls that share their ethos or worship, though what benefit an entity gains from this merging remains unknown. The good pass through the Ethereal Plane toward Heaven. The wicked pass through the Shadow Plane toward Hell. And the vast majority, who were neither wholly good nor wholly wicked, drift toward whichever plane resonates most strongly with the life they led.
Most inhabitants of Mazariim worship either several entities or a primary entity associated with their ancestry. A Gormdawi dwarf venerates Mordrion above all, but may offer prayer to Dirgin before descending into a new mine. A Madronian human follows Tiovin but keeps a shrine to Polyvin in the shop. Worship is practical, transactional, and sincere all at once. The entities grant spells to their clergy, answer prayers when it suits them, and maintain a presence in the world through their priesthoods. Whether that constitutes genuine divine relationship or something more mechanical is a question the theologians of every race have argued for millennia without resolution.
A character's class or profession may determine patronage as strongly as ancestry. Paladins follow Pala'dinae. Monks study under the teachings of Mau or Guzon. Sorcerers drawn to raw magical theory venerate Alagalothor. Druids answer to Minerva or Gruhathyrir regardless of race. The entities do not demand exclusivity. They demand observance, and they are patient about the form it takes. Many cultures also venerate lesser entities unknown beyond their borders. The Ejiin worship Ashura and Khan, entities that hold no following anywhere else in the world, because the values those entities represent belong specifically to Ejiin culture and carry no meaning outside it.
Twelve entities that stirred before recorded history, before the first mortal race spoke its first word. Some embody elements as old as the firmament itself. Others dwell in the spaces between sanity and sleep, in the abyssal dark where reason holds no dominion. All of them were ancient when the youngest civilizations were young, and they will endure when the last civilization is dust.
The first. Roughly two billion years before the present age, something stirred in the void between galaxies where mana had gathered in concentrations beyond measure. Mau opened his awareness and looked outward, and the act of observation bound the magical force to every sentient mind it touched. He did not intend to create souls. He simply watched, and watching was enough. The Astral Sea formed around his consciousness, a silver expanse connecting all planes of existence, and from that vantage he has observed every reality and every timeline since.
Mau does not intervene. He watches. He records. He keeps the secrets of alternate realities and parallel timelines locked behind eyes that have never closed. The Church of Mau operates through oracles who receive visions of possible futures, and through the Balance Wardens, servants who guard the boundaries between worlds. Monks who follow his teachings pursue stillness, observation, and the careful study of what is rather than what they wish to be. Mau gave mortals the power of future sight, and in return they gave their devotion, and he accepted it the way he accepts everything, in silence, from a distance beyond imagining.
Formed in the heart of a star billions of times larger than the sun that warms Mazariim. Pyrantor is not a thinker. He is not a planner. He is fire given awareness, an elemental force that grants spells to those who worship flame without caring whether they use them well or poorly. The Varkonans know him as Ra and have built their pyramid-temples to catch his light at dawn, their Ra-Priests reading the angle of shadow and the color of the horizon the way other priests read scripture. He neither aids nor hinders. He burns, and that is sufficient, and it has been sufficient since before the first mortal learned to fear the dark.
An Old God whose gaze spent eons watching a world made entirely of water before turning its attention to Mazariim. Iquinias governs the tides and the storms with the same alien disinterest that Pyrantor brings to fire. Sailors make offerings before every voyage, tossing coins or food into the sea and asking for calm waters, and the sea gives them calm or does not, and the offerings change nothing, and the sailors make them anyway. The Bryndawi dwarves of the southern coast worship him alongside their own gods. The Sabonaar merchant fleets paint his trident on every hull. Whether Iquinias notices is a question his priests have learned not to ask.
The elves call her Mother of Rain and have done so since before the Enlightening. Vuleala is capricious and changeable as the weather she governs, favoring creatures of the sky and granting her blessings with the same unpredictable rhythm as a summer storm. Sailors pray to her for favorable winds, often in the same breath they pray to Iquinias for calm seas, and the contradiction does not trouble them. Lightning and the worship of it led early mortals to her, and she accepted their devotion the way wind accepts a sail, without sentiment and without refusal.
The dwarves worshipped Dirgin long before Mordrion arrived, and the Bryndawi still do. He embodies stone, caves, and the gemstones hidden in the deep places of the earth. Of all the Old Gods, Dirgin may be the least aware of his worshipers. He is a mindless entity in the truest sense, an elemental consciousness that grants spells to those who venerate earth and stone without any evidence of deliberate thought or intention behind the granting. Dwarven and gnomish artisans call his name before cutting the first stone of a new project, and the stone behaves or does not, and the artisan adjusts accordingly. Dirgin asks nothing. He is stone, and stone endures, and that is the whole of his theology.
Formed around a black hole in the emptiness between galaxies, served by the Umbral Titans who are among the most feared beings in the outer planes. Zebulba represents the end of all things, the slow cooling of stars, the unraveling of matter, the silence that waits at the finish of every story. Those who worshipped the dark arts in the earliest ages of mortal civilization found him first, and he granted them power over undeath, the perversion of the natural cycle that his clergy considers the highest sacrament. In Moamon, in the Merchant Nations, his worship grows openly. Intelligent undead walk the streets. The city smells of coal smoke and something worse. And in the Negative Energy Plane, Zebulba waits with the patience of entropy itself, because entropy always wins, and it is never in a hurry.
Born of pure energy around a white hole approximately twenty thousand years before the Great War, Asti settled on Mazariim around 13,000 BW, taking female form among the Akovarian civilization. Her avatar walked among the people and the benefits were immediate and measurable. Plagues ceased. Wounds closed faster. Lifespans lengthened. She powered the ley-lines, the vast magical rivers that connected Akovarian cities and enabled ritual-enhanced spellcasting of a sophistication the modern world has not yet reproduced.
The Dragon War of 6,830 BW destroyed everything she had built. When the ley-lines detonated, Akovarian priests transferred her essence into the Mask of the Pharaoh to preserve her from annihilation. She remained imprisoned for nearly seven thousand years. The ley-line reawakening of 815 AW heralded her release, and for the first time since the detonation, prayers to Asti have begun receiving answers. Her followers tend toward pacifism and healing, and the growing community of ley-walkers studying the reawakened lines consider her their patron.
Gruhathyrir created the Fae Realm, a primordial wilderness where the laws of nature obey no mortal logic, and from that realm all fey creatures trace their ancestry. He is the eldest of the nature gods, older than Minerva's teachings, older than the elven veneration of the land, older than the forests themselves. The Tawarim wood elves of Vand'ardhon worship him alongside Minerva, and the Wyld-Bound druids of the Mespoian Peninsula serve him with a fervor that makes their Minervan counterparts uneasy. His nature-focused alien mind guides the chaotic growth of things that grow without permission. He is unpredictable and capricious, and his followers would not have him any other way.
The youngest of the Old Gods, and the strangest of those who are not counted among the dark. Zanzabar coalesced from dream-energies after the first sentient races evolved minds complex enough to dream, and upon waking he created the Plane of Dreams, a transitive plane connecting the sleeping consciousness of every sentient creature in the universe. He exists in the boundary between waking and sleeping, watching the subconscious thoughts of billions of minds without interference, neither helping nor harming, simply observing the sea of dreams with an attentiveness that makes even Mau's legendary patience look restless by comparison. Prophets and enchanters seek his favor for the ability to walk through sleeping minds, and some have received it, though the line between Zanzabar's blessing and Zanzabar's indifference is thinner than the membrane between dreaming and waking.
When Og'thallith woke approximately eighteen thousand years before the Great War, the Abyss woke with him, or perhaps the Abyss had always existed and was merely waiting for a mind wretched enough to claim it. The distinction has never mattered to the gibbering things that pour from its depths. Og'thallith is insanity given form, a consciousness that merged with the infinite layers of the Abyss and became indistinguishable from its realm. His demons tempted the first spellcasters into dark pacts, whispering through the spaces between thoughts, and the cults that answered have never stopped answering. They are found in every age and every land, small and secretive and patient, and they serve a master whose sanity shattered before the first mortal civilization built its first wall.
The most alien of all the entities. Xorancon stirred in the spaces between realities within the Plane of Dreams roughly seventeen thousand years before the Great War, and its awakening tore open the Nightmare Realm, a wound in the fabric of the dreaming world that has never healed. It manifests as a titanic Eye Nightmare, a being of impossible geometry whose form shifts and contradicts itself from one heartbeat to the next. Its dream-spawned aberrations manifest as Eye Nightmares across the multiverse, each one a fragment of a consciousness so vast and so fundamentally wrong that mortal minds buckle under even indirect contact. Xorancon does not communicate in words. It communicates in visions that leave the recipient uncertain whether they are awake, and the uncertainty never fully passes.
Served by the serpentine Chaos Serpents, Kazrokath embodies transformation and the rejection of stasis. Nothing should remain as it is. Nothing should be permitted to settle. His followers embrace change in all its forms, and his realm in Limbo shifts constantly, its geography rewriting itself moment to moment in response to the psychic energy of every mind that touches it. Psions and sorcerers find his philosophy attractive, because the power they wield is itself a form of imposed change on the fabric of reality. Anarchists venerate him for obvious reasons. The sane venerate him carefully, because Kazrokath does not distinguish between change that improves and change that destroys, and his blessings can be difficult to tell apart from his curses.
Thirteen entities that woke after the mortal races had already begun their long climb from stone tools to civilization. Unlike the Old Gods, these beings stirred in response to mortal faith, mortal need, or mortal folly, and the cultures that worship them were shaped by the encounter. One was destroyed. The rest remain.
The first entity to awaken near Mazariim itself. Minerva made contact with the elves in 3,402 BW during the event the elves call the Enlightening, when she gathered the elders and shamans of every major nation and carried them to Elysium. A month passed in her realm. A single heartbeat passed on the material plane. They returned carrying wisdom, magical power, and a reverence for the natural world so deep it restructured every aspect of elven civilization. Personal property ceased to exist. The tribal governance structure solidified around elder councils guided by Minervan principles. The land became sacred, not as metaphor but as fact.
Her church operates in two branches. The Cundo'elda guides spiritual matters through clerics, oracles, and inquisitors. The Cundo'dori tends the land through druids and rangers. Both answer to the Seven Artharans, the leaders of the elven nations who carry a portion of Minerva's own essence, passed from one leader to the next upon death. During the War to End All Wars, Minerva divided her essence among the Artharans rather than risk her avatar on the battlefield. She resides in Elysium alongside Eilistra'rae, and her worship has begun spreading beyond the elves into human druid circles and halfling Greenwarden communities in the centuries since the War.
Guzon awakened from mana that had gathered in the stillness between star systems, where nothing moved and nothing changed, around 3,200 BW. He built the Law Engines in Utopia, constructs that enforce the fundamental laws of reality and society with mechanical precision. His philosophy is order through understanding rather than order through force. Discipline, meditation, and the patient study of fundamental truths lead to enlightenment, and enlightenment leads to a mind that no longer needs to be governed because it governs itself. Gnomish monks follow his teachings alongside those of Rivoleen, and the contemplative monasteries of the Yazawee Mountains draw students from races that Guzon himself has never shown particular interest in. He does not seek worshipers. He offers a path. Those who walk it do so because the walking itself is sufficient.
Around 3,000 BW, a single entity awakened and fractured almost immediately into two halves. Tiovin and Taovan are the same being divided against itself, one half representing everything good in the human heart and the other everything corrupt. Tiovin created Heaven and the Ethereal Plane to receive the souls of the righteous dead, and his clergy work to redeem the fallen in every human nation where their faith has taken root. In the Inner Kingdoms, the Church of Tiovin operates hospitals, orphanages, schools, and charitable foundations. In Tentigo, the same faith drives crusades, forced conversions, and military expansion. The entity's teachings have not changed. The mortals who carry them have shaped them to fit the world they want.
The Pact governs the eternal competition between Tiovin and Taovan for mortal souls, a divine agreement whose exact terms are known only to the two halves and to Mau, who witnessed it. The faithful of both sides know only that the competition continues, and that neither half has won, and that the winning may not be the point.
The other half. Taovan created Hell to receive the wicked dead and the Shadow Plane as the conduit through which evil souls travel to reach it. He rules over Devils, beings of structured malice who enforce contracts, punish the damned, and carry out the administrative machinery of damnation with a bureaucratic efficiency that Tiovin's angels have never matched. Where Tiovin appeals to compassion, Taovan appeals to ambition, self-interest, and the quiet voice that tells a person they deserve more and should take it. His cults operate in secret across most of Nigal, tolerated nowhere, stamped out regularly, and never fully destroyed. The Lands of Chaos are his most honest territory, where his philosophy that power is the only truth operates without pretense.
Hinterhin awakened in 2,971 BW and found a people already living the way he would have asked them to live. The hin of Shalazar needed no commandments about community or generosity or the value of a shared meal. They had sorted that out for themselves over fifteen thousand years of practice. So Hinterhin knelt in the red dirt of Shalazar, the stories say, and worked it between his fingers until it was loose and dark and smelled the way good earth should smell after rain. And he said, not to anyone in particular, "This will do." And it did. And it does.
Hinterhome, his plane, is the afterlife every halfling expects and none fears. An endless harvest celebration where the bread is warm, the company is familiar, and nobody is in a hurry to be anywhere else. His clergy operate more as community organizers than priests, tending crops, settling disputes, coordinating festivals, and keeping the rhythms of village life turning in time with the seasons. He assists the hin indirectly, with fair weather and good harvests and the kind of luck that puts the right person in the right place at the right time. The hin do not build cathedrals. They set an extra plate at the table, because Hinterhin might stop by, and it would be rude not to be ready.
A lesser entity venerated exclusively by the Ejiin, unknown to the rest of the world because the values Ashura represents belong to Ejiin culture alone and carry no meaning outside it. An androgynous figure clad in samurai plate, Ashura holds tea ceremonies in Tengoku, the celestial realm carved from the Positive Energy Plane, and wages an endless war against Khan, the entity of dishonor and betrayal. The battles between them follow a pattern the shamans have recorded for centuries. Ashura typically prevails, but the cost is always high, and Khan always returns. Honor does not defeat dishonor permanently. It holds the line, again and again, at a price. Ashura's clerics emphasize duty, the healing arts, and the understanding that doing what is right will hurt, and the hurt does not excuse you from doing it.
The dark counterpart to Ashura, venerated within Ejiin culture as the embodiment of betrayal, cowardice, and the corruption of honor. Served by Oni, Khan represents everything a samurai is taught to reject, and the rejection gives the teaching its force. Without Khan, Ashura's code would be philosophy. With Khan, it becomes survival. His worship is forbidden in the Miyasaki Shogunate and practiced openly in the Veppankarai Islands, where the ninja clans consider pragmatism a higher virtue than honor. Khan claimed his territory within the Negative Energy Plane with Zebulba's permission, and the two have maintained an uneasy coexistence since. The battles between Khan and Ashura during lunar eclipses are observed by shamans across the Yashaki Islands, and the outcome is read as omen for the season to come.
Ry'le awakened in the Nightmare Realm around 2,800 BW and spent nearly thirty-six centuries watching Mazariim in silence, patient beyond mortal reckoning. Unlike every other entity in this pantheon, Ry'le does not seek worship. It seeks replacement. Its goal is the systematic infiltration and consumption of mortal civilizations, substituting key individuals with shapeshifting aberrations so perfect that the deception survives scrutiny, intimacy, and even magical detection. The entity resembles a vast cephalopod of shifting form, and its consciousness touches Mazariim through dreams, whispering to those whose minds are open and whose ambitions outpace their judgment. It made first contact in 820 AW through a Madronian warlock, opened a rift at the ruins of Yrugas in 822 AW, and deployed seven elite shapeshifters called Masters to infiltrate the nobility of Beneshire. The rift was destroyed in 824 AW, but the full extent of Ry'le's reach remains unknown, and the entity's patience has not diminished.
Rivoleen awakened around 1,780 BW, less than a century after Mordrion's arrival from Oerth, and quickly became the dominant gnomish deity. He appeared as a humble scholar and asked questions rather than issued commandments. The gnomes, a people who had always valued the question over the answer, recognized a kindred spirit immediately. His teaching is simple. Creativity flourishes in freedom. All beings deserve autonomy. The examined life is the only life worth leading. Gnomish inventors invoke his name before beginning new work, and the settlements of the Yazawee Mountains carry the imprint of his philosophy in every workshop, every clocktower, and every public square where debate is held under open sky. Served by the Beast Saints, his faith emphasizes enlightenment through thought rather than through devotion, which suits a people who have always preferred to take things apart and see how they work.
Garnak awakened in 1,666 BW and has never stopped hunting. His realm, the Savage Lands, is a plane of perpetual wilderness where the strong feed and the weak are fed upon, and the cycle carries no moral weight because morality is a construct of creatures who have forgotten what they are. Petitioners who arrive in his realm may ascend to become Animal Lords, spirits of specific beast-types who embody the apex of their kind. His worship took root among primitive races and among those civilized peoples who retain a connection to the predator within. Lycanthropes venerate him, and druids of a particular temperament find his teachings bracing in their honesty. The hunt is sacred. The kill is prayer. And Garnak roams his realm on legs that never tire, pursuing prey that will never run out.
Quarzel manifested on a battlefield in 1,293 BW, an entity born from the accumulated mana of organized warfare, and for twelve centuries he rewarded those who conquered through iron and fear. His servants were the Titans, fifty-foot warriors of living stone and metal, and his clergy ruled through the doctrine that might alone confers right. The month of Quarz bears his name. His first high priest held the rank of Iron Fist, a title that persisted through every generation of his faith until the last.
At the Battle of Fort Hope in 1 BW, Quarzel stood alongside Mordrion and lesser entities against the avatar of Zuel. He was obliterated. Not banished, not wounded, not diminished. Destroyed. His essence scattered beyond recovery, his plane collapsed, and the Titans who served him fell where they stood and did not rise. The faithful who prayed that night received silence, and silence is all they have received since. Quarzel is the proof that entities can die, and his absence is the empty space in every theological argument about divine permanence.
Xannith awakened in 699 BW, and her temples have been disguised as banks and auction houses ever since. Served by Soul Reapers and Pit Spawn emissaries, she teaches a single truth that requires no faith to believe. Everything has a price. Every person, every loyalty, every principle can be bought if the offer is sufficient. Her worship gained favor among human nobles and merchants whose ambition outran their scruples, and it has spread to every major city where commerce flows and conscience is negotiable. She is the sworn enemy of Polyvin, who teaches that fortune should be shared, and the rivalry between their clergies plays out in market squares and counting houses across Nigal with a viciousness that puts some holy wars to shame.
Polyvin awakened in 374 BW, making him the youngest of the greater entities, and he governs chance, opportunity, and the pathways between places. His domain, the City of Fortune, is a doughnut-shaped metropolis of limitless festhalls, gambling dens, and marketplaces where the currency is luck itself. He has no race of outsider servants. Instead, he creates copies of himself, each wearing a different face and running a different game. Halflings and merchants venerate him with equal fervor, and the faithful believe fortune favors the bold. A coin flipped at a crossroads is a prayer. A door opened without knowing what lies behind it is an act of worship. And Polyvin, somewhere in his impossible city, is laying odds on what happens next.
Seven entities torn from dying universes and hurled into this one. They arrived diminished, lesser beings in a cosmos that was not their own. They cannot form planes. They cannot match the greater entities in raw power. And yet their followings endure, because the faithful do not measure devotion in magical mass.
Mordrion arrived from the universe of Oerth in 1,866 BW, driven through the barrier between worlds during a battle with Gru'umsht, who followed him and became the entity known as Zuel. Both arrived diminished, lesser entities in a new cosmos, but Mordrion found a people in desperate need of unity and gave them what they lacked. He ended the Dwarven Wars between the northern Gormdawi and southern Bryndawi clans and forged a peace that, while imperfect, has held for nearly three thousand years. Every dwarven smith invokes his name before striking the first blow on a new piece of work. The Hammerpriests who serve him are advisors, warriors, and master crafters, and in the great holds of the Dragon Spine the ring of consecrated hammers on blessed anvils is itself a form of prayer.
His avatar was banished during the final year of the War to End All Wars when he confronted Zuel's forces alongside Quarzel and other entities at the Battle of Fort Hope. Unlike Quarzel, Mordrion survived, though the cost of the battle weakened him for the standard century of recovery. His return is anticipated by the Hammerpriests, who calculate the date with the precision they bring to everything else.
He followed Mordrion through the barrier from Oerth in 1,866 BW and brought the orcs with him, or found them waiting, or made them from what he found. The histories disagree. What they do not disagree on is what happened next. Zuel taught the orcs that the strong survive by consuming the weak, and the orcs believed him, and the War to End All Wars was the result. His avatar led the global invasion that overran dwarven holds, burned elven forests, and besieged human cities in numbers the world had never seen assembled. Demious Stoneshaper shattered that avatar with Mordrion's blessed warhammer at the Battle of Fort Hope in 1 BW, banishing Zuel for the standard hundred and one years. Eight centuries have passed since. Zuel has returned. His orcs remain in the mountains and wastelands, diminished but not destroyed, and the memory of what they did under his banner still burns in every race that survived it.
In 1,492 BW, a battle between Alagalothor, the avatar of Sheeva, and the time-traveling archmage Thalaman tore all three from their dying universe and deposited them in the skies above Mazariim. Three entities from a dead cosmos, arriving together, diminished and stranded. Alagalothor adapted fastest. He embodies magic in all its forms, the joy of discovery, the discipline of research, the craft of creating new spells and enchantments. His clerics, called Arcanologists, seek lost magics and share them freely. He watches from his seat in the Astral Plane, observing how mortals use the power he champions, and his followers believe his observation itself is a form of blessing, though whether Alagalothor agrees is a question only the Astral Plane knows the answer to.
Arrived in 1,492 BW alongside Alagalothor and Thalaman from the dying universe of Talernon, carried through the barrier in the same catastrophic event. Served by Ruin Spirits, Sheeva teaches a single principle. Every wrong must be answered. Every betrayal repaid. Every slight returned with interest and with poison. Her followers never forgive, because forgiveness is weakness, and weakness invites the next wound. Her cult operates in the shadows of every civilization on Nigal, attracting those who have been hurt and who have decided that the hurt will not go unanswered. The dagger and the vial are her sacraments. Patience is her highest virtue, because revenge served cold requires time, and Sheeva's followers have learned to wait.
The third arrival from Talernon in 1,492 BW, and the strangest. Thalaman was a mortal archmage who mastered time magic and was transformed by it into something no longer entirely mortal and no longer entirely sane. His consciousness exists across multiple timelines simultaneously, fragmented and scattered like the sands of the broken hourglass that serves as his symbol. He taught mortals the dangerous art of chronomancy before temporal madness consumed what remained of his coherent mind. Served by the Fluxspawn, creatures as broken and repulsive as the shattered timelines that birthed them, Thalaman occupies a realm in Limbo where cause and effect do not always proceed in the expected direction. His worshipers are few, and most of them share his condition. Whether that is a consequence of worshipping him or a prerequisite for it is a question that answers itself differently depending on when you ask it.
Pala'dinae arrived in 1,414 BW from the dying universe of Krynn, and his arrival created something that had not existed before on Mazariim. Paladins. Holy warriors bound by oaths of justice and honor, wielding divine power granted not through priestly study but through the strength of personal conviction. He takes the form of a platinum dragon, and his teachings are direct. Protect the innocent. Uphold justice. Honor your word. Do not tolerate cruelty. The faith spread rapidly through Madronian and Sabonaar cultures, where knightly orders formed around his principles and carry his standard into battle and courtroom alike. In Mazariim, the word "paladin" is not a class designation borrowed from general fantasy. It refers specifically to the servants of Pala'dinae, and the title carries the weight of his name.
Eilistra'rae arrived in 1,377 BW from the universe of Faerûn, thought dead by the people she had left behind. Minerva received her and granted her a place in Elysium, and the good-aligned Night Elves who accompanied her settled among the elven nations of Vand'ardhon. She is the elven goddess of moonlight, beauty, and song, and she interacts with mortals more directly than most entities, attending dances and festivals in avatar form with a frequency that other gods consider undignified and her followers consider a blessing. The Gaear'rim ocean elves hold her strongest following among the elven nations, and her priestesses serve as bards, dancers, and keepers of the songs that preserve elven history in a form older than writing. She is jovial and mysterious in equal measure, and the moonlight on the water off the coast of Gaearman is said to carry her laughter on calm nights.
One mortal in the history of Mazariim has crossed the threshold between flesh and divinity. Whether any will follow remains an open question that Gyru himself declines to answer.
Gyru was a mortal dwarf. In 1,111 BW, he built the Apotheosis Engine, a machine that absorbed magical energy in sufficient quantity to transform him into a lesser entity, the only confirmed case of mortal ascension in the history of Mazariim. Alagalothor shattered the device, but the energy had already done its work. Gyru was transported to Utopia, where he resides now in a clockwork laboratory served by constructs called Living Theorems, mathematical beings native to that plane. His followers among dwarven and gnomish artificers seek to replicate his achievement through the melding of magic and technology. Whether any of them will succeed is a question Gyru himself does not answer. He was a tinkerer in life, and divinity has not changed the habit. He builds. He tests. He adjusts. The faithful interpret his silence as encouragement. The fragments of his machine are scattered across the universe, and in 839 AW a global race to recover them nearly reshaped the balance of power among the entities themselves.
| Ancestry | Most Venerated Entities |
|---|---|
| Human | Tiovin / Taovan, Pala'dinae, Quarzel (historical), Sheeva, Xannith |
| Elven | Minerva, Eilistra'rae, Gruhathyrir |
| Dwarven | Mordrion, Dirgin |
| Halfling | Hinterhin, Polyvin |
| Gnome | Rivoleen, Guzon |
| Ejiin | Ashura, Khan |
| Orc / Goblin | Zuel, Garnak |
| Plane | Alignment | Resident Entities |
|---|---|---|
| Abaddon | NE | Xannith, Zuel |
| Abyss | CE | Og'thallith, Sheeva |
| Astral Plane | N | Mau, Alagalothor |
| City of Fortune | N | Polyvin |
| Elysium | CG | Minerva, Eilistra'rae |
| Fae Realm | CN | Gruhathyrir |
| Fields of Battle | LE | Quarzel (collapsed) |
| Heaven | Good | Tiovin, Pala'dinae |
| Hell | Evil | Taovan |
| Hinterhome | CG | Hinterhin |
| Limbo | CN | Kazrokath, Thalaman |
| Negative Energy Plane | CE | Zebulba, Khan |
| Nightmare Realm | CE | Xorancon, Ry'le |
| Nirvana | NG | Rivoleen |
| Plane of Air | N | Vuleala |
| Plane of Dreams | CN | Zanzabar |
| Plane of Earth | N | Dirgin |
| Plane of Fire | N | Pyrantor |
| Plane of Water | N | Iquinias |
| Positive Energy Plane | LG | Asti, Ashura |
| Savage Lands | N | Garnak |
| Utopia | LN | Guzon, Mordrion, Gyru |
| Entity | Alignment | Origin | Power | Plane |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alagalothor | N | Talernon (1,492 BW) | Lesser | Astral Plane |
| Ashura | LG | Native (~2,900 BW) | Lesser | Positive Energy Plane |
| Asti | LG | Native (~20,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Positive Energy Plane |
| Dirgin | N | Native (~25,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Plane of Earth |
| Eilistra'rae | CG | Faerûn (1,377 BW) | Lesser | Elysium |
| Garnak | N | Native (1,666 BW) | Greater | Savage Lands |
| Gruhathyrir | CN | Native (~20,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Fae Realm |
| Guzon | LN | Native (~3,200 BW) | Greater | Utopia |
| Gyru | LN | Ascended mortal (1,111 BW) | Lesser | Utopia |
| Hinterhin | CG | Native (2,971 BW) | Greater | Hinterhome |
| Iquinias | N | Native (~25,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Plane of Water |
| Kazrokath | CN | Native (~16,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Limbo |
| Khan | CE | Native (~2,900 BW) | Lesser | Negative Energy Plane |
| Mau | N | Native (~2 billion BW) | Greater (Old God) | Astral Plane |
| Minerva | NG | Native (3,402 BW) | Greater | Elysium |
| Mordrion | LN | Oerth (1,866 BW) | Lesser | Utopia |
| Og'thallith | CE | Native (~18,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Abyss |
| Pala'dinae | LG | Krynn (1,414 BW) | Lesser | Heaven |
| Polyvin | N | Native (374 BW) | Greater | City of Fortune |
| Pyrantor | N | Native (~25,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Plane of Fire |
| Quarzel | LE | Native (1,293 BW) | Greater (destroyed) | Fields of Battle (collapsed) |
| Rivoleen | NG | Native (~1,780 BW) | Greater | Nirvana |
| Ry'le | CE | Native (~2,800 BW) | Greater | Nightmare Realm |
| Sheeva | CE | Talernon (1,492 BW) | Lesser | Abyss |
| Taovan | E | Native (~3,000 BW) | Greater | Hell |
| Thalaman | CN | Talernon (1,492 BW) | Lesser | Limbo |
| Tiovin | G | Native (~3,000 BW) | Greater | Heaven |
| Vuleala | N | Native (~25,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Plane of Air |
| Xannith | NE | Native (699 BW) | Greater | Abaddon |
| Xorancon | CE | Native (~17,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Nightmare Realm |
| Zanzabar | N | Native (~20,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Plane of Dreams |
| Zebulba | CE | Native (~25,000 BW) | Greater (Old God) | Negative Energy Plane |
| Zuel | NE | Oerth (1,866 BW) | Lesser | Abaddon |