Editing Iron Kingdoms (section)

==Deities and Dragons==

All of the deities (except for the dragons, and possibly Cyriss) come from the plane of Urcaen. Urcaen pulls dodecatuple duty as all of your [[Planescape|Mystical D&D planes]] rolled into one; it could be made up of hundreds of planes, it could be the gateway to planes unknown, or it could be the only other plane out there; nobody knows. If you die in Caen (the Prime Material Plane), your soul probably goes to Urcaen (unless it gets trapped by a necromancer, where things get theologically tricky). Lost souls wandering Urcaen apparently get eaten by the Wurm or stepped on by Menoth in short order, so it's prudent to worship a god to ensure that your afterlife is longer than your first one.

Oh, and by the way, only one dude has ever officially travelled to Urcaen and made it back alive, and he's sworn to an eternal oath of silence. Urcaen is not a plane to which you can jaunt back and forth easily. Taking a trip to Urcaen might be okay for a religiously-minded group of extremely high-level PCs, but not for anything less.

===Menoth===

God of Humanity (not [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|this guy]]). Lawful Neutral in the D&D system, and that should tell you a lot. Menoth made humanity and gave them the basic technology they needed to become vaguely civilised (fire, farming, buildings, writing) and has spent his entire time since then being as massive a dick to humans as he can possibly manage. The good news is that he doesn't pay that much attention to humankind in general, being rather preoccupied with his neverending hunt/battle/whatever with the Devourer Wurm. Demands that you pay him strict and total obedience forever, and boy will his priesthood get you if you don't. Menite worshippers who die without having sinned too much get to go to the City of Man, one of the few strongholds of not-being-eaten in the mirror plane of Urcaen.

The [[Protectorate of Menoth]] is a theocratic nation dedicated to Him; think all of the worst bits of Muslim theocracies mixed with a caricature of medieval Roman Catholic Europe, or the Imperium in third edition, that's it. Basically Douglas Seacat thinks the ancient conflicts between Muslims and Christians was an enormous cripple fight.

===The Twins (Morrow and Thamar)===

Morrow and Thamar, unlike their fellow gods, were once mortal humans.  Morrow is like Jesus, teaching you to work to improve yourself into the best person you can be while helping others to improve themselves too.  Meanwhile, his bitch sister Thamar is like Ayn Rand, she is very much evil; teaching you to work to improve yourself into the best person you can be while ''tearing other people down'' so that you shine that much brighter.  

In life, the two agreed that a person should be able to rise above their current station in life, even to a point where they can rival the Wurm and Menoth.  In death they went and did just that, though there were a lot of tears, heartbreak, and family drama in-between.  While Menite priests like to say that only Menoth can fight the Wurm and save his faithful, the Twins also have their own cities for their followers and help out too.  Their followers claim Menoth basically showed up to talk with them and, after some bluster, basically told them that so long as they kept acknowledging him as Creator and helping him hunt and fight the Wurm, he'd be cool with them running Caen for him.  He didn't care much about that place anyway.

Since then, various extraordinary individuals have managed to raise themselves up to something like sainthood, becoming mini-gods under one of the two twins.  Morrow's saints are called Ascended, and like Christian saints they were each [[noblebright|righteous badasses and paragons of virtue]].  Thamar's saints are called Scions, and they got where ''they'' are by being [[grimdark|unscrupulous badasses willing to do absolutely anything to get ahead]].  Morrow gave men hope in the dark ages of oppression on the part of the Orgoth, but Thamar gave humankind the Gift of Magic to put that hope on a firm foundation, bargaining elf gods and two thirds of human souls to Infernals for that.

Morrow's church is the dominant one in the Iron Kingdoms, and it fills the role of a Protestant church for the setting.  All of the human Iron Kingdoms except for the Protectorate of Menoth are majority-Morrowans.  Theologically, most "moderate" Menites (a.k.a., those outside the Protectorate) are somewhat cool with the Morrowan church, which does acknowledge Menoth as the creator of man and sings his praises in their hymns alongside Morrow.

Thamar's worship, meanwhile, is highly decentralized.  Most followers treat her religion as a very secret and personal thing, since, though not technically illegal in and of itself, most people don't want it widely known that they're worshipping the god of ruthless do-anything-to-get-ahead.  Her followers are also notorious for getting up to things that ''are'' illegal in her worship, like necromancy and crime.

Basically Paragon and Renegade from [[Bioware|Mass Effect.]]

===The Devourer Wurm===

The other great big god of the setting; Chaotic Neutral God of the Wilderness. The Wurm represents wild beasts, forests, and all that jazz. However, he is not a peaceful happy nature god; he is into blood sacrifice, burning down cities, and creating monsters for the fun of it. He's such a jerk that in the background lore a lot of his defeated worshipers converted to Menoth as he was the more benign of the two. Like Menoth, he's too preoccupied fighting his arch-rival to pay any attention to the world. Wurm-worshippers tend to be savage wild cannibals. His worshipers believe that they will get to join his eternal hunt across Urcaen when they die, looking for lost souls to eat and laying siege to the City of Man.

The [[Circle Orboros]] view the Wurm and Dhunia as two aspects of the same god, representing the destructive and nurturing aspects of nature respectively, although their version of this single god is a lot closer to the Wurm than Dhunia. They believe that Menoth and the Wurm must remain in balance, or the losing party will try to escape into Caen and probably step on and/or eat it in short order. Since Menoth is so powerful what with the spread of civilization and all, so they're trying to take civilization down a few pegs. If the wilderness was too powerful, they'd <s>build a metropolis or two</s>stomp the remaining civilisation into the Stone Age, so that it wouldn't attract Wurm's attention since he would be already in charge.

===Dhunia===

The mother goddess of the trolls, goblins, and ogres. These races used to worship both her and the Wurm, but as Wurm worship got them repeatedly screwed over, they gradually turned away from him and focused exclusively on Dhunia. This is where you go if you want a reasonably kind and nurturing nature deity, although it's only those "primitive" races who take her seriously. Dhunian worshipers are into reincarnation; she collects the souls of her worshipers, adds them to her metaphorical Big Pot O' Souls, and ladles out a mixture of old and new soul bits whenever something new is born.

Dhunians believe that the Wyrm was Dhunia's first son, and Dhunia's second son was Menoth himself. The Wyrm grew so wild that he raped her, impregnating her with all the predators of the world, from lions and tigers and bears to trollkin and ogrun and, yes, that most dangerous of all predators: MAN. Menoth struck out to hunt down the Wyrm and kick his ass for hurting their mother.  But the millennia have gone by so violently that Menoth and the Wyrm don't remember much of anything besides the joy of hunting one another which... actually makes a kind of sense.

Dhunian clerics are generally old-school shaman-spellcasters, and quite a few of them are always procreating hither and thither.

===The Divine Court of the Elves===

Since Elves always have to be special snowflakes they have eight gods, all associated with a particular division of time; Lacyr (Ages), Ossyris (Hours), Ayisla (Night), Nyrro (Day), Scyrah (Spring), Lurynsar (Summer), Lyliss (Autumn) and Nyssor (Winter). When these gods noticed the existence of sentient beings on Caen, they decided to have a crack at making their own, and therefore [[Elves]] happened (so this setting's see themselves as a refinement of earlier designs rather than an elder race). 

The elven gods were considerably more interventionist than the others, handing out secrets aplenty. However, this seemed to get harder for them over time, as the walls between Caen and Urcaen apparently thickened. The gods decided to teach the elves how to make a bridge between the planes, and the elves made the fucking stupid decision to put this bridge right in the middle of their capital. And of course, people flocked from miles around to see the opening of the bridge. So when it exploded after the gods made it through, a ''lot'' of elves died. It also split the continent of Immoren in half and turned most of the eastern half into a royally fucked-up desert, so it's not like building the bridge on the outskirts of town would have helped much, but that's still some pretty damn terrible urban planning.

Elves believed that their dead would either get to spend eternity in Lyoss if they were extra-specially good, or be reincarnated (still as elves) if they didn't make the cut. However, since the Rivening, the cycle has stopped, and some elves have been born without souls. It's hypothesized that these elves were meant to be receptacles for old souls, except that the old souls couldn't find their way back.

===The Great Fathers and the Claywives===

The dwarves have a total of thirteen gods, all dedicated to a particular form of craftsmanship or art; Orm (building), Godor (oration), Dohl (mining), Ghrd (wealth), Lodhul (cooking), Jhord (espionage), Odom (secrets), Dovur (weaponsmithing), Uldar (armoursmithing), Dhurg (axe-manship), Hrord (swordsmanship), Udo (hammer-manship), and Sigmur (whose role isn't mentioned in the IKRPG Core Rules but must be written down somewhere). These gods were created in slavery to a giant sentient mountain called Ghor, but they were eventually able to escape Ghor's clutches by tricking him into letting himself be mined hollow. They made their way to Caen, fashioned themselves some women called the Claywives (who are also worshiped by some dwarves), fathered the dwarven race, and left down an extremely detailed system of laws before heading back to Urcaen again. The dwarves believe that their dead get to live in the tower that the Great Fathers built out of Ghor's insides, eternally refining their chosen crafts. So where elves are slowly slipping away into nothingness, humans are either in a state of eternal servitude or getting spiritually nommed, and skorne are damned to everlasting torment in the Void, Rhulfolk chill and [[gets_shit_done|make themselves useful]] during a huge metaphysical game of [[dwarf_fortress|Dwarf Fortress.]] That is, after a likely long life of making steam-powered magic robots, shooting the other races in their stupid tall people faces, and making fat stacks of bling from doing both. So praise be to the gods for assuring the vaguely Jewish/Scots-Irish thug life will be pimping from beginning to end and beyond.

===Toruk the Dragonfather===

[[Dragon]]s in the Iron Kingdoms are basically [[Call of Cthulhu|Elder Gods]], and as his title implies, Toruk is their progenitor and the [[Cthulhu|biggest and baddest of the lot]]. Dragons keep their heart, soul, mind, and other essential organs in the form of a rock called a heartstone aka athanc. Killing a dragon but leaving its heartstone behind just means that the dragon will generate a new body from the stone and come back for revenge. Alas, athanc is indestructible (breaking it creates [[FAIL|two dragons instead of one]]), unless eaten by another dragon. Dragons also release a terrible nature-altering radiation field known as blight. Different dragons have different kinds of blight, and Toruk's appears to be flavored towards making undead creatures. The resident undead mad scientists of Cryx have used this to create all kinds of biomechanical zombies, ghosts, ghouls etc.

Toruk has never told anyone where he came from, and there doesn't seem to be any other easy way of finding out -- the only thing people are sure of is that none of the other gods made him. We do know, however, where his progeny came from. Toruk got lonely one day and decided to cut some pieces from his heart-stone. Unfortunately, the dragons which grew from those pieces got along like a sack full of cats, since they're all driven by the inescapable desire to join their broken heartstones back together again, so they were in a constant state of war for a while. The dragon-children managed to ally for just long enough to drive Toruk off the Immoren mainland before descending back into anarchy. There are now only a fairly small number of dragon-children left in the world, and most of them seem to be biding their time until they think that they have a decent chance of bringing down all of the others. Toruk, on the other hand, seems to be perfectly content chillin' on his personal island, waiting for his babies to come to him.

Even though Toruk lives on Caen, your players will not get to kill him, any more than D&D players should rightfully get to kill the <strike>[[Tarrasque]]</strike> [[Asmodeus]]. He is [[Mary Sue|plot armored]] up to and including the wazoo. Characters who get within one mile of Toruk either die and come back as zombies or pledge undying loyalty to him before he kills them and brings them back as zombies.

===Everblight===

Toruk's cancer baby that grew legs and walked around spreading blight everywhere, who seems to have decided that now is the time to make his move against his dragon-dad. Everblight isn't that powerful as dragons go, but he is smart, and unlike all other dragons he actually has the capacity to control and focus his blighting abilities. He also <s>found</s> built himself a magical sword that lets him cut up his heart-stone without making more baby dragons, so of course he's dispensed with his physical form altogether and has been sticking bits of his heartstone into various (mostly female) elves (the males are: one ogre, one golem-ish-thing, and one three-headed monster) to make himself an army. Oh yeah, and he's been making Xenomorph-esque monsters in his spare time.

===Cyriss===

{{See also|Convergence of Cyriss}}

Goddess of SCIENCE and CLOCKWORK and FUNKY MACHINERY and NO ROBOTS ALLOWED (not [[Omnissiah|that other guy]]). Cyriss was discovered relatively recently by an astronomer who found a new planet in Caen's star system and was struck by weird prophetic fever dreams; the planet spoke to him, calling itself Cyriss, the Clockwork Goddess. The astronomer gathered likeminded [[neckbeard]]s to stare at the planet and come up with religious dogma based on what it told them. As far as they can figure, they have to summon Cyriss to Caen in person by building a big funky world-encompassing machine, because that worked sooooo well when the elves did it. They also are not fans of artificial intelligences like [[Warjack]]s; they have a [[Dune|Thou shalt not build a machine in likeness of the human mind]] kind of thing going.

Basically, Cyriss is [[Paranoia|Friend Computer]].

===Defiers and Grymkin===
Nightmarish creatures from fairytales and their masters. You see, Menoth, for all his power and glory, is a huge asshole. After creating people he simply dropped them in Caen to figure things on their own and buggered off to chase his <s>boyfriend</s> enemy Wurm. Humans had to manage on their own, and in this their souls started showing true potential, shining brightly enough for Menoth to notice. Being a selfish prick, he wanted both hoard new toys and be the only top dog, so he invented basics of civilisation (fire, farming, buildings, writing) and gave them to humans, demanding worship in return and collecting the souls of faithful upon their deaths. But all his laws basically stated "Menoth is great, suck his dick and STFU", and he didn't pay attention to such meaningless things as virtue and decency, rewarding only blind obedience. Naturally, some took offence to that, and defied his will (hence the name), with five of them discovering aforementioned potential of their souls (basically, becoming beta-versions of Morrow and Thamar). Before they could do something really awesome and kick his ass, Menoth stuffed them all in the sack and shoved into the <s>deepest asshole</s> prison in Urcaen, to be endlessly tormented by their own nightmares. They chilled there for several millenia, learning to control and channel their nightmares and transforming an occasional soul that wanders in their domain withouth much else to do. Then old witch and supposedly goddess Zevanna Agha became aware of Infernals (see below), cut a deal with Defiers and opened their prison, so that they could commence a Wicked Harvest upon traders with Infernals and everyone else (but she still holds the keys, just in case they start looking funny at her).

===The Infernals===

[[Demon]]s who live in Urcaen, or possibly somewhere beyond it, who desire human souls. Much like Dr. Faustus, it's possible to gain insane magical powers if you're willing to offer a soul to the Infernals. Unlike in Dr. Faustus, the Infernals don't particularly care ''whose'' soul you offer them -- any soul will do. That said, the Infernals also charge insane rates of compound interest, so they're going to keep asking for more and more souls and they'll take yours if you can't deliver. Infernals basically exist to give your campaign's main villain whatever insane magic powers you want.
Also, gave arcane magic to humans per the deal with Thamar, in exchange for the Elven gods and 2/3 of all living human souls. Then decided to show up to collect way earlier than agreed, and now Thamar and everyone else shit bricks.