#the Dessidiac

[aswasforetold]

The Dessidiac - Lawful Great Adventures

A bit of a challenge and work in progress for how a zodiac/astrology might exist on the Continent.

THE DESSIDIAC ZODIAC

Dec 21st - The Passing, no one god, rather the god entering Dec 22 - Jan 6 (noon) - Mercatus Jan 6 (noon) - Jan 22 - Donrai Jan 23 - Feb 8 (noon) - Ryllae Feb 8 (noon) - Feb 24 - Ghailen Feb 25 - Mar 13 (noon) - Arcos Mar 13 (noon) - Mar 30 - Eddin Mar 31 - Apr 16 (noon) - Lencellier Apr 16 (noon) - May 3 - Zelka May 4 - May 20 (noon) - Heradrel May 20 (noon) - Jun 6 - Astolat Jun 7 - Jun 23 (noon) - Efdelshedel Jun 23 (noon) - Jul 9 - Corlesis Jul 10 - July 26 (noon) - Ahm July 26 (noon) - Aug 12 - Malomb Aug 13 - Aug 29 (noon) - Luxitor Aug 29 (noon) - Sept 15 - The Shadow Sept 16 - Oct 1 (noon) - Kaer Oct 1 (noon) - Oct 18 - Hemeel Oct 19 - Nov 3 (noon) - Sheffelfleck Nov 3 (noon) - Nov 20 - Shiom Nov 21 - Dec 6 (noon) - Dorrál Dec 6 (noon) - Dec 21 - Neriev

0 - Mercatus - The Fool - The youngest god, son of Arcos and Ghailen. A trickster God who created mortalkind by asking for a gift from each of the deities on his birthday. Adventures, beginnings, risks, travellers pray to Mercatus before a long journey

1 - Donrai - The Magician - The God of all things knowable. Keeper of the library of Celestia where all the knowledge shared in the world is stored.

2 - Ryllae - The High Priestess- The Goddess of secrets and all knowledge that is NOT to be known. She is advisor to the suspicious and desperate, and the revealer of the truths we push away from ourselves.

3 - Ghailen - The Empress - Ghailen is the keeper and ruler of the lands and the wilderness. She is the goddess of growth and fertility. She is not always so gentle, but rather cares more about the growth of the whole rather than the plight of individuals.

4 - Arcos - The Emperor - The king of kings and ruler of Celestia, which sits upon the crown of the spoke of The Wheel. Where Ghailen tends to the lands of mortalkind, Arcos rules mortalkind itself. He is a just and wise ruler, if divinely arrogant.

5 - Eddin - The Hierophant - The God of lineage, history, and tradition. Keeper of the lines of all mortals, and worshipped by lawmakers and ledgermains. Eddin is the father of the three sisters, Justice, Temperance, and Judgement.

6 -Lencellier -  The Lovers - The deity of love and community. Lencellier is the parent of several gods including the three sisters. They delight in the bonds mortals form and often finds ways to spend time physically in the world for festivals.

7 - Zelka - The Chariot - The great steed of Celestia who is ridden by the eldest sister, Dorral. Zelka is the god of action and travel, but Zelka does not care who is lost or left behind when the action starts.

8 - Heradrel - Strength - The eldest daughter of Arcos and Ghailen, who tamed Zelka. Heradrel is the goddess of both inner and outer strength, she is worshipped by mortals seeking inner peace and stability so they can control their own fates.

9 - Astolat - The Hermit - Astolat is the only goddess who abandoned Celestia. After she was jilted by Lencellier, she wandered into The Shadow where she now spends her time guiding lost souls. She is the goddess of letting go, of the lost, the forgotten, and lonely.

10 - Efdelshedel - Wheel of Fortune - Efdeleshedel is an eternal wheel grinding slowly in The Shadow. Efdelshedel is the entity of time and fate. It is said that one rotation from The Wheel can take millennia and that every rotation is nearly identical but with small changes.

11 -Corlesis - Justice - The sister of revolution. She is the youngest of the three sisters and fights injustice directly with violence and fury. She is often depicted like a valkyrie and is worshipped by rebels and those opposed to bullies and tyrants.

12 - Ahm - The Hanged Man - Ahm is the god of patience, martyrdom, sacrifice, and suffering. Ahm teaches us to grow from our pain and wait it out. Ahm loves Astolat and so hangs upside-down from his spoke for eternity, watching for her to return.

13 - Malomb -  Death - When Mercatus created mortals, there were only 21 gods. Malomb appeared and gave mortals The Gift, which is death. Malomb sees to the passage of souls at their time and abhors those that would try to refuse their gift.

14 - Luxitor - Temperance - The middle sister, she is the sister of compromise and non-violence. She seeks change gradually so that all parties become better through each other. She seeks balance in disputes. Comparing someone to Luxitor is sometimes considered an insult.

15 - The Shadow - The Devil - The place between places is a whirling ocean of black ink containing all of the collective wants and desires of all mortals. Associated with mirrors, The Shadow does not lie, it only allows you to lie to yourself.

16 - Kaer - The Tower - Represented by a meteor crashing to the world, Kaer is the god of great upheaval. Often called "The Father Moon" Kaer is the harsh realization of your weakness after a tragedy, the lesson learned after a calamitous mistake.

17 - Hemeel - The Star - One of the "outer" Gods, Hemeel follows Kaer as the first glimmer of hope during the darkest night. The bereaved and the downtrodden turn to Hemeel when they feel all is lost in search of guidance.

18 - Sheffelfleck - The Moon - The God of dreams, one of the earliest entities in the pantheon who dreamed The Wheel into existence and The Sun to see it. It is said that Sheffelfleck eats nightmares but should Sheffelfleck stir, all the nightmares he has eaten will come to life.

19 - Shiom - The Sun - The mother sun who delights in the revelation of truth and loves to gaze at the world from on high. She hates The Shadow and so only watches The Wheel and its passing. It is said she perpetually sleeps and only awakens at the end of a rotation.

20 - Dorrál - Judgement - The eldest of the sisters, the general of the armies of Celestia who rides on the back of Zelka. She is a brilliant tactician who seeks change dispassionately through guile and strategy.

21 - Neriev - The World - The goddess of hearth, home, and the very essence of the living world. Neriev is both easy and difficult to worship, as she is essentially everything. Travelers often thank her when they catch a familiar sight when they are nearly home.

The God whose time you were born during, the God whose Passing you were born under, and the God who marks your current year all effect you differently to make your present reality, which then interacts with the god who is currently Passing.

[ttbenjamin]

The Dessidiac

Art by @aswasforetold

The Dessidiac is the pantheon to my homebrew world, the setting for my podcast, Lawful Great Adventures. The 22 Gods of the Dessidiac are based on the personalities of the major arcana of the Tarot. The goal of building this pantheon was to create a relationship with the Divine that parallels the human experience and helps players connect with each of the Gods in their own way.

Frankly, I think it worked. The 100+ story of Lawful Great Adventures has highlighted the Gods, individually and as a group, frequently in ways large and small. The beauty of the major arcana is how grounded it is when help up against our own lives. Each God is upright and inverse (I'm not doing 44 Gods) so each God is the best and worst aspect of its nature. There is no Good and Evil in the objective sense, there's just human experience and how it relates to the Divine.

Over the next 22 days, with the help of As Was Foretold, a cast member on LGA who plays Azimuth of Bardun, I'm going to highlight each of the gods in order. Partially to introduce myself to Tumblr, partially to reflect on this pantheon and my last 3 years of Actual Play Podcasting.

The story of Lawful Great Adventures centers around four friends from a small farming town that are whisked away to the exact opposite side of the continent and embark on a long journey home. Each is also watched by one of the 22 Gods and over the course of the adventure, they meet the rest of the Watched. Each Watched is as complex and powerful as the player characters and are of interest to their patron God for one reason or another.

So, during this series that I'm gonna try real hard to land over the next 22 days, I'm going to introduce each God, their Watched (some of them don't survive, it's a pretty intense story), the lore behind them, and maybe some under-the-hood design stuff about how I put the whole thing together.

Anyway please enjoy and like... Follow the podcast maybe. I don't know how Tumblr feels about promotion so I'm trying to be chill about that.

[aswasforetold]

The Dessidiac gods of four young friends on their long journey home. Redrawing took so much longer than the initial drawings, but they deserve it. (Malomb didn't get redrawn, though, just...shifted around a bit.)

[aswasforetold]

XXI - Neriev [The World]

[ttbenjamin]

The Dessidiac - Mercatus - The Fool

art by @aswasforetold

Mercatus is the youngest God, the God of adventures, luck, risk, and mortals. He is the closest thing the Dessidiac has to a trickster God. Mercatus is the youngest son of Arcos, the Emperor, and Ghailen, the Empress. He delights in the living world moreso than the other Gods and often sneaks onto the continent to blend in with mortalkind.

Mercatus is the God of mortals, in fact. The story goes like this: Mercatus was the only God who enjoyed his birthday. The rest had forgotten it long ago. On one particular birthday, he asked Arcos to demand of the Gods each a gift for him. Arcos, who loved his rebellious son, bade the other Gods each present a gift.

At the celebration, Mercatus took the gifts from each God and created a new being from them. Pleased with his prank, the other Gods smouldered as he played with his new toys. But then, one last God presented itself. Emerging from the Shadow was an unknown God called Malomb, who called themself death. Malomb's gift was the gift of death to Mercatus' creation, and that was the birth of mortalkind.

Mercatus is watching Fayne Bowen, one of the player characters and the daughter of a barksheep farmer in the tiny town of Pathostone. Fayne prefers animals to people, and keeps her barksheep, Billabus, close at hand always. Fun fact about Fayne, her player has never played a ttrpg before but has wanted to for years. We figured Mercatus was a good fit because, frankly, I had no idea how she would play.

AS IT TURNS OUT, Fayne is a reclusive, quiet, gentle, goddamn chaos gremlin. Literally Fayne is up for the worst ideas, always backs her friends no matter how incredibly wrong they are, and takes the most over-the-top risks throughout the game. Fayne's player is blessed with the gift of prophecy because that character is all about getting into trouble.

Oh and here's Billabus