Tasakeru

The Three Gods

The Godspiral: Religious symbol representing the Three Gods, recognized throughout Sankami.

About Tasakeru

• The Eight Sentient Species
• The Three Gods
• ???

They are the beings which brought the eight species out of chaos and into civilization. They are the basis on which all of society is founded. Their battle shaped the very surface of the island, altering it forevermore… these are the Three Gods.

No sentient knows the true reason they chose to appear on that day fifteen-hundred years ago, but the account of that brief visit has been passed down through seventy-five generations. Each species has different stories of where the Gods came from, who they were, and where they disappeared to… these stories are collectively known as Godlore.

The worship of the Three Gods is called Sanshinto (Old Standard) or Tritheism (New Standard).

HISTORY

“Every sentient is taught the story at an early age. Ask any cub or pup or kit old enough to speak, and they will tell you. It is the story of this land, how it rose from a state of anarchy and chaos to become the society we know today. They may tell you different names, or different reasons for it happening, but at its heart, the story is always the same…

“Centuries ago, the eight sentient species were locked in endless conflict. So brutal, savage, and long-lived was this period that all history prior to it has been lost. All reasons for the fighting, any knowledge to what had started it, or why, we have no way of knowing. This was the Species War. And on that day fifteen-hundred years ago, the accumulated hatred of the warring species caused a being black as night to appear from the depths of the earth, so vast it could be seen by all. This being looked down on the multitude of species below, and to their horror, it began to speak. ‘This land…’ it said, and the world trembled with its words, ‘… with all its beauty and promise, has been given to you, and you have squandered it. For centuries you have stained the earth with blood and darkness. Now your retribution is at hand. For I am the God of Death. All shall wither before me…’ With that, the Death God breathed, and all that it breathed upon began to burn…”

“As the land, the trees, and all that we had built burned to ash; as the Death God looked down and laughed at the suffering it had caused and as all seemed lost, twin pillars of light broke through the black smoke that had blocked out the sky. And from that heavenly light emerged two more Gods… The first was the God of Time. His body shone with a golden aura, and his very presence bolstered the hearts of all the warriors below. Next to him appeared the Goddess of Life, beautiful and strong and draped in silver…

And the battle began, Time and Life fighting against Death. Nothing like this battle has been seen before or since… The sheer amount of power exchanged between the three twisted reality itself. The sea churned, the earth trembled, and the very wind and fire joined the fray as the warriors below looked on in awe and terror. For hour after hour, the Gods fought, until finally Time and Life defeated Death. To seal it away, the Gods raised a mountain high enough to touch the clouds and sealed the Death God underneath it… Today we know this place as Mount Fury.

And at last, the clouds broke overhead, rain began to fall, and there was silence throughout the land as the benevolent Gods looked down upon the multitudes. ‘The time for war is over,’ they said, and every living sentient heard their words. ‘It is time to begin a new era of peace. Be strong, remember us, and treasure the land you have been given, for someday, we will return…’ As a symbol of their promise, the Goddess of Life raised a giant tree in the center of where our city now stands, a tree with branches high enough to look out over all the land… and with that final gesture, the Gods left. From thereon after, our land has been known as Sankami, the Land of Three Gods…”

[An excerpt from The Past, the Present, and What Lies Beyond, by Ashpaw Longstripe]

THE SQUIRRELS

Squirrel Godlore tells that the God of Time is named the Shogun. Clad in red and white robes and carrying twin swords representing the past and future, the Shogun is the perfect warrior, the very embodiment of the Seven Virtues of the samurai. Artistic depictions show him with two familiars fighting by his side: one a great scarlet bird which is said to have risen from the burning wastelands of the island’s southern shores, and the other a white tiger, its stripes eternally shifting with the currents of the western wind. Some stories tell that these two Sacred Beasts sacrificed themselves to defend the Shogun during the great battle, their souls inhabiting the God’s twin swords. These swords are now said to allow the Shogun to watch over all of time by gazing into the reflections in the blades.

The squirrel Goddess of Life is known as Lady Terra (Chi-Oujo-sama in Old Standard, though this name has fallen from popular use.) Her robes are white, blue, and silver, and she carries a mighty scepter made of rosewood. Lady Terra is the image of the female ideal just as the Shogun is that of the males… Everything that lives falls under her protection; her empathy and compassion is boundless and eternal. It is the reverence for Lady Terra that inspired the squirrels’ long-standing ban on the use of magic… they feel that only she should be able to manipulate the natural order. Lady Terra is sometimes depicted alongside her own Sacred Beasts: a mighty dragon from the eastern sea, and a massive tortoise from beyond the mountains to the north. Lady Terra is now said to be resting far beyond the sight of mortals, in a place called the Celestial Plain. Here, she waits for the day when she and the other Gods will return to Sankami…

The HellSerpent is the squirrels’ God of Death. Its name is a transliteration of its former Old Standard name, Abidokuja. It takes the form of a viper, darkest black with markings the color of fresh blood and eyes of white-hot fire. The Serpent’s venom is said to be the cause of all the world’s ills… it poisons and corrupts even the noblest of hearts. It sleeps deep underneath Mount Fury, biding its time, knowing that one day it will be strong enough to escape its prison. Interestingly, while the Shogun and Lady Terra are shown to be roughly the size of modern sentients, artistic depictions of the HellSerpent vary in size from tiny to gigantic… The explanation for this is that it feeds on hatred and discord, growing large in times of war and violence.

THE BADGERS

As told by Godlore scholar Cedar Deepclaw:

“It’s said our people were born from the roots of the trees in the great forests of this land, and like the trees, we grew to become the largest and strongest of all sentients. As such, our Code calls for us to protect the smaller species as the trees protect us.

“In the time of the Species War, when even the badgers fought with the other species, there were said to have grown three trees unlike any others. The first was tall and strong, growing in the eastern forests, and even when the fires of war set it ablaze, it would never fall. The second grew in solitude by the western sea. Its branches hung low, and water constantly formed from their tips, as if the tree were weeping from all the sorrows it had witnessed. The third grew in the northern mountains, and was said to be the most beautiful of all, but watching the horrors of the war turned its bark black, and its wood warped and twisted…

“On the Day of the Three Gods, known to my people as the Day of Awakening, the black tree split and gave birth to a badger whose fur was as black as soot… His eyes glinted cold, and he wielded fiery blades in his hands… This was Black Cypress, the God of Death. Driven mad by the horrors of war, Black Cypress slew guilty and innocent alike, the blades setting fire to whatever they touched. In his anger, Black Cypress even attacked the other two trees, his former friends… The forest tree began to burn, but still would not topple, and the ocean tree was protected by the sea itself, which rose up around it to quench the flame. Then, from the first tree rose Lord Alder, his stripes burning bright with the fire that Cypress had tried to use against him, his mighty fists clenched in righteous indignation. From the second tree came Madam Willow, her cheeks wet with tears… Upon her head was a crown of leaves, and with her hands she commanded the awesome might of the sea.

“Together the two fought valiantly to protect the people of the island from Cypress’s wrath. After a terrible battle, they forced Cypress onto his own blades, and drove him back into the black tree from whence he came, then buried the tree beneath Mount Fury… but their victory came at the cost of their own lives, for the blades Cypress wielded had wounded them both deeply. In their final moments, the Gods told us that the weapons Cypress had wielded were indeed fearsome, but they had also been his undoing. They implored us to live in harmony with all living things, and to forgive the poor Cypress, who had strayed from that path of harmony… With those last requests, the Gods departed from the mortal world.”

THE FOXES

As told by Faun Reinaka, recorded by Ashpaw Longstripe:

“Well, of course our Godlore is different. We foxes are the best storytellers in the world, after all! Our Godlore doesn’t have any of that awful preaching and moralizing that the others do… I mean, what do you think we are? Badgers?

“So, our Goddess of Life appeared first, and her name was Sakura. And instead of descending from the clouds or coming out of trees or whatever, she lived among the foxes of the Earth as a mortal… and among the other, lesser species too. [pause] What?! That’s how the story goes, don’t look at me like that! In any case, Sakura was more beautiful than any vixen, with silver fur and six long tails. Whenever she passed by, flowers would grow behind her wherever she stepped. She would catch the attention of all the males, even from the other species, but Sakura was unhappy. She knew they all adored her, but none of those males had what she was looking for in a mate…

“And then one day at the end of winter, he came along… the most handsome todd to ever live. He called himself Kyuubi, and he had a coat like white gold and nine tails, even more than Sakura. No one knows exactly where he came from, but Sakura knew from the moment she laid eyes on him that they were destined to be together. And one glance from Kyuubi told her that he felt the same. So that began the most perfect, beautiful love that has ever been…

“For two weeks straight, the couple took to bed, enjoying each other’s perfect bodies, never tiring or… [pause] Stop giving me that look, dammit. Fine then, if I have to skip over the good parts… Anyway. So after the two weeks of mating, they finally emerged from their den, on the very day that spring began. From then on they spent all their time together. It was a happy time; everyone could gather around them and just spend hours watching them, and when they retired each night, life would seem a little more dull and gray than it would with them around. Their love for each affected every sentient in Sankami, some more than others…

“There was one todd who had always been alone. Sure, he was handsome enough, but he had been born with black fur. We foxes are superstitious, and to us black fur is a bad omen. So this lonely todd saw Sakura and fell in love with her. He nursed that love for months on end… and when Kyuubi finally appeared, something in him broke. He was the one sentient that Kyuubi and Sakura’s love couldn’t affect, because his heart had become twisted by jealousy. The lonely todd began to spread rumors among the people, saying that Kyuubi and Sakura were planning to leave Sankami and never come back. And as the months went on and the mates spent more and more time inside their den, the rumors spread more and more quickly… Soon the foxes were arguing among themselves, and with the other species. The arguments turned to fights, and the fights turned to battles, and the battles turned to war…

“When Kyuubi and Sakura emerged from their den after that winter, all of Sankami was in chaos. They quickly realized what had happened, and they tracked down the lonely todd and confronted him. Haughty as he could be, the todd didn’t care about the suffering his words had caused. In fact, he challenged Kyuubi to a duel to the death, with the winner taking Sakura’s hand forever. Kyuubi agreed, and they arranged to duel on the first day of summer…

“When the todd and Kyuubi fought, their emotions were so intense that they even affected the world around them… the earth shook with each blow, and lightning split the sky. It seemed like the battle between them would never end, until Kyuubi managed to claw the todd’s handsome face, and left horrible scars. In a rage, the Scarred One struck Kyuubi to the ground. He was about to strike the final blow when Sakura stepped in front of Kyuubi, shielding him with her own body… She told the todd that she would die rather than be his. Their loyalty to each other strengthened the couple, but it was like poison to the todd. The last bit of goodness in his heart died, as his fur turned black from head to tail. The earth swallowed him up, creating a mountain on that spot, and everything went quiet.

“Sadly, Kyuubi and Sakura knew that as long as they remained among the people, another like the Scarred One might appear. So they bid farewell to their people and their home and disappeared, now full-fledged Gods. Just before they vanished, though, they told all of Sankami to remember the folly of the Scarred One, and to live with beauty and love for all creation. That’s how I was told the story, anyway.”

THE RACCOONS

No one outside of the raccoons themselves knows of their Godlore, and of course the raccoons aren’t talking. Their obsession with secrecy is so absolute that not even the names of their God of Time and Goddess of Life are known to outsiders. The lone piece of Godlore that has escaped the raccoons’ territory concerns their God of Death, The Unmarked. Also called “Revealer of Secrets”, “The Foul Traitor”, and “The Betrayer”, he is a raccoon that has committed the ultimate crime of their kind: revealing his true name to the outside world. As punishment, he was stripped of all his markings, and is now said to wander the outside world in shame, never to return to his people.

THE WOLVES

From the records of Vega of the WeaverPack:

“Before the Gods appeared, we roamed the lands without guidance or purpose, living only to survive. We took no notice of the heavens above us until that dark day when the Death God rose from the earth. Its form was vast and shapeless, stretching from horizon to horizon, turning the skies into an endless void of black. Eclipse looked upon us all and laughed, for without light, all things began to die.

“In that darkness two wolves stood, a male and female, each defying Eclipse. As they swore to protect their people, their fur became white as driven snow, standing out like torches and bringing hope to the fallen. The first was Orion, the great hunter, who carried a golden bow and burning arrows. And the second was Andromeda, she of boundless sight and beauty, holding a silver-tipped javelin. Side-by-side the two new Gods stood bravely as Eclipse tore open the Beneath to quell their light, but even against the legions of the dead they did not fall. They looked into the very heart of the darkness, Orion letting fly his arrows and Andromeda hurling her javelin. Their aim was swift and true, piercing through the void and sealing Eclipse away.

“However, the Gods knew their work was not done. In order to protect their people that they loved so dearly, they promised to watch over them forevermore. And so, Orion plucked out one eye and cast it upward, higher and higher until it became the sun. Andromeda was second. She gave both her eyes and cast them as well, her left becoming the moon and her right shattering into glittering shards like diamonds to form the stars. With that done, they wandered to the unknown lands in the north, far past the mountains.

“Their eyes watch us still from the heavens, guiding us from above. But Eclipse watches us as well, waiting for its chance to extinguish the light again… When the skies turn black and the stars disappear, it looks down upon us and smiles, knowing that its day of return will one day come.”

THE RABBITS

The rabbits look at all things, even the Gods, through a lens of discerning logic and concrete evidence. In their view, the Gods are not physical beings at all, but eternal forces called Caelestae (singular, Caelesta). Their names for the Gods are simply Time, Life, and Death, and rabbit Godlore has it that all three are unknowable, unfathomable, and unaffected by prayer or worship. At the end of the great Battle of the Gods, rather than a message of brotherhood and prosperity, the rabbits tell that the Caelestae spoke of the potential for sentientkind to someday exist without the need for guidance from divine beings, that within themselves the sentients could find the seeds for greatness.

The rabbits have done well in following this directive over the centuries… too well, some would argue. They have little patience for philosophy or abstract thinking, preferring to concern themselves to what can be verified and analyzed by research. For these reasons, rabbits can seem cold and arrogant to other species, and their beliefs clash deeply with the more spiritual badgers and squirrels in particular.

THE FERRETS

“Before anything else, before the world and before all existence, there was the Demon,” says the ferrets’ Godlore. The Demon Obsidian occupies a unique position in all the tales of the Gods: it is the only version of the Death God to exist before the other two, and the only version not to be expressly evil. Obsidian is said to be near-incomprehensible to moral minds, a bringer of madness to the weak-minded. In art, its shape is depicted as a writhing, shapeless mass with thousands of limbs stretching in all directions from a central body. There are two distinct interpretations of this image, which has led to a minor schism among ferret culture. The first group thinks that the Demon is a massive ball of countless intertwined snakes, with individuals constantly trying to escape, while the second sees a spider with an infinite number of legs. The Demon is said to burrow its countless limbs/legs into the hearts of every living creature, creating all the world’s ills, and only the strongest can resist its call to madness and chaos. And yet, Obsidian is still seen as a necessary part of the world… every story of its destruction in ferret culture leads to an even worse calamity than before, as the balance of nature is upset without it.

The ferret gods of Time and Life are Aurumus, the Golden Magus and Argenta, the Silver Druidess. Clad in robes made of their respective elements, the two used the forces of magic to seal Obsidian beneath Mount Fury, and gave their gifts to the first mages before departing from the mortal world. They alone are free of the Demon’s influence, due to their hearts being transformed into sacred precious metal during the Day of Three Gods.

THE SKUNKS

The skunks’ matriarchal culture extends to even their Godlore; all three of their Gods are female. Even more interestingly, their Goddess of Life, Greatmother Rose, is usually held high above the other two, as the ultimate symbol of fertility and motherhood.

The story goes that Greatmother Rose, along with Crysanthemum, Goddess of Time, and Aconite, Goddess of Death, all desired the same male. Each wanted this nameless florin for themselves, but Rose believed that given time, the male would come to her of his own volition. The other two sought to claim this male in their own ways: Crysanthemum tried three times to use magic and trickery to win him, in her last attempt even resorting to a love potion, but when her actions were discovered she was chastised for it. Nevertheless, the male was flattered to be sought in such a way, and he and Crysanthemum remained friends even after he made his choice.

Aconite, however, committed the greatest crime known to skunk society in order to try to cleave the male to her side. Her feelings were not of love, but of carnal desire, and so consumed was she that she offered herself to him, becoming submissive to his will. Horrified, Greatmother Rose and Crysanthemum punished Aconite by infusing her with the most powerful of poisons, so that forevermore she would slowly kill whomever she touched. Paintings depict the cursed Aconite as wrapped in indigo silks, beautiful to behold but unable to love.