Editing The Wyzard Setting Essays (section)

== Known Gods ==
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There are many, many beings of sufficient power to arguably merit worship.  This can be construed as a matter of scale.  A demonic imp with delusions of grandeur might eventually teach a troupe of small monkeys to bow down and give it offerings; the relation of a demon price to its human cultists is not different in kind.


Because of the great many deities in the world (which might range from a gigantic alligator of ancient and inhuman intelligence worshipped by a tribe of goblins, to an actual extraplanar being with plenary powers over the material world), there will never be a comprehensive list of them.  If a player invokes or worships some given being, I'm inclined to assume that being exists, in some sense, if it can be fitted into the setting in any sensible way.  Because the gods demonstrably and obviously exist, often inconveniently so, the arrangements of churches and temples extant in many fantasy gaming worlds have no place here. Clerics are trained to deal with whatever god is appropriate, and the profession has secondary functions such as managing the transition between life and death (whether preventing the transfer in the case of healing spells, or enforcing it by blowing up skeletons with Turn Undead.) They are generally not given to religious awe (they know how the sausage is made), unless some feigned or genuine ritual ecstasy is more likely to impress the marks.


Still, for purposes of versimilitude, I will list a few deities and describe them, so that players can gain a sense of the setting as it exists in my head.

=== The Hungry Man ===
The world's psychopomp and most widely recognized deity of death.  He appears as a huge but emaciated gnoll, with spidery limbs and a big sack over one shoulder.  When a being dies, and the corpse is not properly disposed of, their soul is collected by the Hungry Man and taken away to the Empty Lands, a featureless gray wasteland of infinite size.  He curses the dead with his own endless and insatiable hunger, so that they spend eternity tearing at each other's substanceless flesh in an attempt to fill the utter emptiness within.  It is occasionally possible for unusually clever and determined souls to somehow find their way back to the world from the lands of the dead.  However, their hunger follows them, thus resulting in the strong tendency of the undead to desire the flesh, blood, or life energy of the living.


=== He Who Waits Behind the Walls ===
A curious but deeply sinister being, or potential being.  Venerated largely by corrupt scholars, He Who Waits Behind the Walls is said not to exist in this universe yet, but may be brought into it if his history is completed.  That history consists of fragmentary tales of horrific events, which seem to be either fictional, or fictionalized versions of real events.  There are also philosophical concepts and alternate moralities that are considered to be component's of his ''corpus''.  His cult's major activities consist of hunting down pieces of his history and ideology (they either have some method of separating random textual detritus from authentic fragment's of His History, or perhaps they are delusional) and tricking the world into accepting them.  This is the process by which they believe they can help Him into the world.  If the content of his ''corpus'' is indicative of anything, his cult's success in this endeavor would be a '''very bad thing.'''

=== That Which is Concealed Beneath the Surface ===
A Lizardman deity of great antiquity, this being is venerated as an icon of strength and fertility.  It is usually pictured as a great crocodile or alligator submerged underwater.  While worship of That Which is Concealed likely dates back to the Lizardmen's civilizations before the dawn of human history, it is still actively propitiated both by the degenerate Lizardmen of the modern era, and often by humans who live in hot, swampy, or jungle-like environments.  The ritual veneration of That Which is Concealed is generally a barbaric affair, with great bonfires in the humid night, and secret, orgiastic rites.

=== The Rime-limned Queen ===
A being of vast and ineffable knowledge, the Queen came to the world from the stars, and is now said to float in the heavens amongst the Moons.  Rites to her are conducted at night on high plateaus, and often involve strange lights in the sky and consorting with otherworldly beings.  Her clerics often display strange scars and disfigurements.  The Queen is taken quite seriously by demons and devils, as she has demonstrated the ability to interdict them from passage between their realms and the earth.

===The Guardian of the Eighth Spiral===
Usually depicted as a huge mass of serpents, heads and bodies extending from a sphere made up of all their tails melded together.  A kind of protector-spirit which is set on places which are to be absolutely forbidden.  There are very few clerics devoted solely to this deity; they tend to convert to its special service after already achieving great power through a prior path.  This deity is also sometimes invoked in proceedings to deliver horrific curses on one who has committed a major transgression.  For example, a host who killed his guest in violation of Hospitality might have his body permanently infested with small, flesh-devouring worms in this deity's name.  No one knows precisely what the Eighth Spiral is, nor what happened to the previous seven.

===The Wolf of the World's Ending===
A being of enormous size and unlimited destructive potential.  The legends describe this entity as a wolf, which is bound about with chains of red-hot iron, and trapped in the very center of the world.  This description is largely poetic, although not completely inaccurate.  The creature has indeed been imprisoned, by who knows what power, at the planet's core.  All educated people know that the Wolf is the root of lycanthropy, as it sends dreams of beastial madness up to the people on the surface of the world.  These dreams are of such power that they can not only unhinge the mind, but also contort the body into a supernormal wolf, or some other animal shape that is sufficiently rooted in the Jungian realm.  The prophecies that the Wolf's eventual escape from its prison will shatter the world into splinters is, unfortunately, probably accurate.  However, by monitoring the activity of volcanic eruptions (caused, of course, by the Wolf's struggles and contortions), sages estimate it will be at least ten thousand years before there's anything to worry about.

===The Drinker of Spilled Blood===
Despite its ominous name and grisly eating habits, the Drinker can be a fairly benign deity.  It requires no more sacrifice than that blood be spilled, and is just as satisfied to have an animal's throat cut, or two dozen people giving up only a little blood.  Keeping the Drinker satisfied prevents infestations of mosquitoes and other biting vermin.  However, its attention is also sought out by those wishing to become vampires, as the attentions of its servitors are necessary for that process (absent some accommodating senior vampire.)  

===The King in Yellow===
One of the rare deities with a clear alignment, the King is explicitly associated with Chaos.  Along with portents of doom and disaster, which the King may in fact be the cause of, he is a source of Arcane magic and other secret lores.  Destroying the difference between truth and falsehood opens the door to the King; he is called upon by certain plays and cunningly-engineered masquerades.