Here's more D&D Backwards religion from Flipped Faerûn. There will be at least one more installment concerning the House of Nature and its sub-grouping, the Furious Hunt (a.k.a., the Deities of Fury in the typical Forgotten Realms). Because this one is kind of a grab-bag, I do feel like it suffers from a lack of unified narrative and middle-movie syndrome, but there is, I think, some good stuff in here nonetheless....
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Featured Inhabitants of the House of Nature: (8)
Lathander (NE)
Chauntea (NE)
Ubtao (N)
Syranita (NE)
Cat Lord (N)
Skerrit (NE)
Mentioned Inhabitants of the House of Nature:
Silvanus (N)
Umberlee (LG)
Friends of the House of Nature:
Selûne (LE)
Mystra (NE)
Enemies of the House of Nature:
Helm (CN)
Dead gods:
Murdane (N?)
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Silvanus may have founded the House of Nature out of love for his daughters and continue to rule it to this day, but his northern throne isn’t the only one to reign over this realm. There are three other directions from which the realm can be ruled. Though none of those thrones’ inhabitants have such a bloodline and entourage as the Forest Father enjoys, nonetheless they rule the House of Nature with him as the Compass Council.
In the east’s rosy sun throne sits daring Lathander, the NE young god of the dawn, drunk on his own capabilities, heedless of consequence or risk. If you can do it, then it is right, and only failure marks an action as reprehensible ~ this is his way. Blonde and beautiful, he it is who husbands all living things, driving us to choose the fittest partners and breed the strongest children, the eternal and inevitable improvement of every race of mortal and animal alike. Purity of blood, he tells us, is what gives him the prowess that is the foundation of his and his followers’ supremacy.⁵
Beyond the brilliant colors which seep from the Morninglord’s throne can be seen a giant mountain rising tall enough that its top can be seen though its foot be hidden behind the throne’s gleam. This is the bordering spirit realm, the House of the Triad, built atop Mount Celestia, and from Castle Everwatch in that realm the CN god of suspicion and wariness, Helm, glowers down at the House of Nature. It is said that in the days of ancient Jhaamdath, whose Twelve Cities of the Sword were ruled only by the power of the enlightened mind, Lathander staged a coup against the other rulers of the gods, seeking the power to assure their perfection. During this Dawn Cataclysm, his ally and still realm-mate Umberlee of the Furious Hunt (that group of gods which enforces the dictates of the gods) to drown Helm’s lover, the practical and rational goddess Murdane. When she died, Helm lost the only thing keeping his paranoia in check; he has determined that all of the House of Nature is suspect and scans flitter-eyed and wary for a possible avenue of invasion.
Across the House of Nature, to the west, the plains fill with crops, tamed and controlled rather than wild and overgrown like the woods inhabited by Silvanus and his get. From these square fields rules hungry NE Chauntea who drinks deep of murdered blood and gives of that reserve of life-energy to the crops that they might grow tall and fruitful. One life taken, blood jumping with all the force of fear and scraps of organs scattered throughout the rows, bones for fences and scarecrows, can be divided by her to grow food for a hundred or more, but a calm, willing sacrifice would only have the energy to feed a couple dozen or so, according to her.
Though Chauntea was married to Silvanus by Selûne, bound to him throughout every phase of the moon from dark to light and back to the dark, she has since taken Lathander to her tilled bed, finding common interest in husbandry and breeding. This is not kept secret from her husband, who watches them from behind the branches at the edge of the fields, eyes rich as the leafy forest floor in autumn with lust for both bodies.
The Rashemi witches call the Three in their mysterious and hidden rites, two of which haunt the verdant lands of the House of Nature. NE Mielikki and Chauntea are joined in these ways by NE Mystra, further cementing the Mother of All Magic’s bond with this realm. Magic is taken, of course, snatched from every living thing, and if we don’t snatch it from wild or tamed nature, the gods’ associations alone tell you that nature will take it from us. Everyone bleeds, after all, and it is the blood which moves everything and all motion falters. Will you be the one to continue moving or will your stillness give that motion to the world around you?
Outside of this triangle-of-the-heart stands alone the Compass Council’s ruler of the south. The N Father of Dinosaurs, Ubtao, rules from the dripping jungle throne. In truth, he prefers to keep his distance anyway, from his fellow rulers and from his worshipers as well. He keeps his own council, and rarely speaks when the House of Nature’s monarchs gather, even to cast his vote or suggest a way to move forward. This has been his way since this ancient being, older than the gods, one of the primordials who originally built Abeir-Toril, made his way without pomp or circumstance into the House of Nature shortly after its founding. He built his realm and claimed a whole direction before anyone even noticed he was there.
Wilderness is famously difficult to rule ~ it is the very nature of such a place to be untamed. The Compass Council does not rule like some monarchy, assured in the right of their power by heritage or conquest, or like the democracies one finds scattered occasionally through the realms, wherein the rulers know that they are wanted and can rule from that comfort. No, the Compass Council rules by means of Syranita. This NE aarakocra-goddess spends her days circling lazily and ready-eyed above the House of Nature. It is said that those eyes of hers are keen enough that even Mielikki’s brambles and the woods’ canopy cannot protect one from her sight. Syranita is fiercely loyal to the Council as a whole, taking no favorites in fear for her divine life, and she reports all the furtive activities of those in their realm to them that they might know and be able to react to any threats to their rule that sprout among their wild subjects. It is Syranita’s eyes that provide the best shield against the piercing sword of Helm’s, a game of seeking unknown dints in the realm’s armor and of spotting the incursions therefrom, an endless game of watching.
Syranita’s efforts work like this: There is a style of prison utilized in some places on Toril, in which the prison is shaped much like a cake. Circular these prisons are, with the cells of those being held occupying the circumference of the building and the officers of the ruler who hold them occupying the center. By blinds and other contrivances, the inspectors conceal themselves from the observation of the prisoners, who thus gain a sentiment of a sort of invisible omnipresence. The whole circuit is reviewable with little, or, if necessary, without any, change of place. In these prisons, as in the House of Nature with its skies haunted by Syranita, the inhabitants know that they might be being observed, unknowing, at any moment, even if it is unlikely. Those who use this system find that it encourages their inhabitants to become more placid thereby, for they can find no comfortable safety in their seditious acts.
Hidden paths through the House of Nature are the natural home of the N Cat Lord, from which he directs the ways of all Abeir-Toril’s felines. The stories of old say that the Cat Lord is ancient and yet young ~ that every so often, the Cat Lord chooses an heir, passing on their mantle to a new generation to reinvent what cats are. There have been fierce Cat Lords with blood matting their fur, and there have been cuddly Cat Lords content to be fed by their mortal servants and offer themselves to be petted, their bellies for scritches. The previous Cat Lord made his home with Ubtao, a jungle beast possessed of an incongruous elegance and nobility. He turned the way of the world upside down, treating the leaf-dripping jungle as we do the cobbled city.
But the current Cat Lord is a creature of those cobbled streets, mangy and ragged-eared, with one snaggle fang that never gets to rest at home behind warm lips, and he makes his home in the small town that houses those who work Chauntea’s fields. “You think your wooden-doored world is somehow different from the world outside its walls whence you harvested that world,” he whispers to the mortals who hide from him huddled behind the wooden doors of their houses, “that these stones upon which I rest my body have made this place somehow separate from the loamy dirt that they interrupt. You are wrong, delicious friends ~ nature cannot be buried beneath streets and banished by city walls. Come out from that stone, escape that confining brick, free yourself from wattle and daub, feel the sun on your face that warms city and wild alike.”
While the Cat Lord makes his hardscrabble life in Chauntea’s fields, Skerrit the Forest Walker roams the tree-crowded remaining lands of the realm. The otherworldly woods echo with the song of his revelry and the dregs of his prodigious consumption of beer can often be seen floating through the House’s waterways. Just like the centaurs who revere him in the Green Isle of Evermeet, this brutish NE god cares about nothing more than his own basest desires and the neverending party that fills his godly days. When he needs sleep, he beds in a cave and when his mighty hungers are roused, he goes hunting the wild animals of that realm with rock and branch in hand. It is said, sometimes, that when a youth or maiden or pretty young thing of some other gender goes suddenly missing and cannot be found, that they have been taken by Skerrit to the House of Nature. Woe be unto them that have come under the muscled sway of this brute, for their lives will not be long, in the spirit worlds though it may be.⁶
⁵ Yeah, flipped Lathander turns out to be a capitalist Nazi god. That’s . . . disturbing, considering the crush I have on NG canon Lathander, but that disturbance is welcome and useful ~ one of the joys of exercises like this is the chance they offer to notice and process the things in my psyche that present the risk of leading me down paths I very much do not want to head down.
⁶ Yep, flipped centaurs turn out to be much truer to the original Greek depiction of this tribe than the usual D&D version. They’re essentially equivalent to the modern stereotype of bikers ~ toxic (and intoxicated) masculinity taken to almost parodic levels.
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