A Brief History of the Silver Rebellion, Part I

A Brief History of the Silver Rebellion, as recorded by Fabula Narrantem.

Part I

To the best of their knowledge, the gods of the Golden Pantheon were the first of their kind. If any evidence exists to prove otherwise, neither we nor they possessed the necessary wisdom, insight or learning to perceive what it was. Those early days are shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, for until the ascent of Qui Verum Dicit, god of truth, no-one truly bothered to make a concerted effort to record history.

What we do understand is that none of that first ‘Golden’ Pantheon were born into divinity, for each of them began their lives as mere mortals. When the time came for them to ascend to the status of divinity, they did not make a conscious choice to do it so much as the universe itself seemed to embrace them and bestow divinity upon them. As near as we can tell, it did this in response to their mortal deeds, when those deeds went beyond anything their peers had accomplished. This remains a hypothesis however, as all future generations of gods have been created directly as the descendants of existing divinity. Ever since the Golden Pantheon was overthrown, no new gods have arisen from mortality.

In order to understand this theory, it is necessary to understand the functions of the prime reality itself. Creation is, by and large, pure chaos. It is ‘ordered’ insofar as each individual facet of it more or less governs itself, and the way those various facets interact with each-other are what mortals understand to be the ‘rules of existence’. However, until the first generation of gods, those facets were in a state of perpetual change. The sheer disparity between the appearance of the various physical and spiritual elements of the world, be they flora or fauna, not to mention the overwhelming variety of their design, is a remnant of the days before divinity when the chaos of existence would give rise to things that mortal minds cannot conceive.

Divinity is not so much being exceptionally strong or powerful in a personal sense, it is simply possessing an intrinsic connection to any number of ‘facets’ of reality. A god whose power makes them more in tune with the soil and stones may not actually be any stronger than any of their peers, they are simply able to manipulate or outright change the facts of those worldly elements they interact with. Thus it is that such a god may sink their hands into a vast boulder like fresh clay and pull it to pieces, or lift it over their head as though it weighed nothing at all – while that very same god may find themselves thwarted by a simple rope or a wooden cage if the elements used in their creation do not fall within the worldly facets they are attuned to.

Thus it is my belief that the Golden Pantheon arose as a direct result of individual mortals first falling into attunement with specific facets of the world, taking command of those facets and using them to reshape reality to their will or pleasure.

What is known is that the gods of the Golden Pantheon were notoriously mortal in their behavior. Mortals that lived in the generations following the downfall of the Golden Pantheon may find the idea of gods that interact directly and explicitly with their followers on a day-to-day basis to be a positively absurd idea. The Silver Pantheon remains known primarily for its professional detachment from the mortal world, using their power to influence events and respond to the prayers of their followers, but rarely taking a personal hand in directing things unless it is to veer away from some sort of catastrophe.

Indeed, beyond very rare instances, mortality under the Silver Pantheon has prospered largely from its own decisions. In the days of the Golden Pantheon, the gods steered the path of mortal civilization – now, they steer themselves.

But what caused this change to occur? Why the change of leadership? And what became of those old gods?

It is necessary at this juncture to provide a little more detail, and list precisely who the prime members of the Golden Pantheon actually were. While the list was quite lengthy, only a select few served as the catalyst for what was to come. I said before that mortality was the defining feature of these first gods, and I shall do my best to explain why those flawed aspects of them led to them earning the ire of their collective offspring. Here following is the list, in no specific order beyond what seems best to me.

First was Primus, god of creation. Now, do not mistake me, Primus was not the one who created reality, nor was he in some way above the other members of the Pantheon beyond sheer seniority. Rather, Primus was the first god we can provably exist through the records of history, though little is known of who he was before he ascended. His dominion was found to reside in the act of making ‘something out of nothing’, though even that is a gross simplification and implies a total misunderstanding of exactly how Primus could drag together even the most miniature atoms to help form the designs his mind gave him.

Primus was directly responsible for many of the ancient legends of monsters, beasts, titans and miracles of impossible appearance, for he rarely made more than one of any given entity, for he was easily bored and seemed far more interested in manifesting his projects than he was in looking after them when they were finished. Unfortunately, this negligent streak carried over to his relationship with his children, the forge-god Calidum Malleo and the alchemy-god Deus Bibere. ‘Cal’ would go on to help create the manacles that would eventually be used to bind the subdued members of the Golden Pantheon, while ‘Biber’ helped to produce the divine potions that empowered the followers of the Silver Pantheon to overcome the mortal cults of their Golden ancestors.

Next is Inanna, god of civilization. It is worth noting here that mortality and sentience had progressed quite a long way before divinity ever provably got involved. All that advancement may have simply vanished back into the ooze of chaos however, had it not been for Inanna’s direct intervention. A member of one of the old tribes, Inanna had the ambition and foresight to see that small tribes rarely lasted long enough to make their mark. Thus she seized control of her own tribe through force of will and raw charisma, an act which she repeated with every other tribe surrounding their own. Unlike the later-discussed god of barbarians however, Inanna’s goal was not to assemble an army, but instead to assemble a stronger community. Rather than using their combined strength to massacre and take, they would use their strength to build, to protect, to work together towards a better way of living.

Her eventual ascension to the status of god came when she had helped her flock complete their first grand city, giving them the final option of choosing a new leader if they so wished. Her people voted unanimously for her to lead them in the future, and her apotheosis took place before their eyes.

Before I go into any explanation of where it all went wrong however, it is necessary to introduce another player into the piece; Ariadne, the god of order. Simply put, there is absolutely no historical record to indicate where precisely Ariadne came from. It is widely assumed that she was one of Inanna’s flock until her own ascent to divinity, likely one of the judges left behind to process the word of law during one of Inanna’s many expeditions. Though no records exist of her during that time, so this is pure conjecture. Whatever the truth of it, Inanna returned one day to find Ariadne enacting sweeping reforms in one of her cities in order to ‘improve’ things.

Obsessed with the scales of justice and the enforcement of what she saw as the ‘true order’, Ariadne and Inanna became what I can only describe as a ‘bickering couple’. Their specific domains were intrinsically linked, their work saw them often needing to collaborate, and the pair of them would ultimately sire a number of children: the machine-god, Dominus Machinarum Aedificator, her sister Proelium Aeternum, god of conquest, the gods of fertility and harvest, Summa Mater and Messis Luna respectively, and finally – some might say inevitably – Semper Inimicus, the god of revenge.

I say inevitably because despite how intrinsically their lives were linked, Ariadne and Inanna could scarcely stand one-another. Two personalities so overflowing with pride, arrogance and ambition who firmly held the belief that a throne contained only enough room for one backside? Conflict was inevitable. So focused were the two of them on their centuries upon centuries of petty rivalry that they scarcely noticed until it was far too late that their own offspring had begun to conspire against them.

Though mortals as a whole had prospered and developed magnificently under Inanna and Ariadne, individual mortals who interacted with the pair tended to end up living a life of feverish worship in praise of the pair; their disposition was legendarily tempestuous, and any opportunity they could take to be offended by some minor slight was seen as a necessary response. So it was that the pair would ultimately be overthrown by the Silver Pantheon to make room for ‘something better organized’.

Since the fall of the Golden Pantheon, several members of the Silver Pantheon have attempted to claim credit for being the first to begin plotting the rebellion, though many quietly suspect that it was the brain-child of Semper Inimicus and Proelium Aeternum – despite them never speaking up to take responsibility for the deed. Personally, I cannot confirm one way or the other, as there are quite a few potential candidates for the original architect of the plot. The best I can do is to list each of them as they appear and allow those who read this to make up their own minds.

Related to the previous pair is Sanguis Ensis Amatoris, better known as the first god of war, but even better known as the god of barbarians. Where Inanna saw her surrounding tribes and saw the opportunity to build something strong and prosperous, Tori saw the tribes surrounding her own and saw the opportunity to unite them in a tidal-wave of raw strength and battle that would give her the opportunity to overrun even the mightiest and most terrifying monsters of the wild world. Her love of battle and conflict was legendary, as was her love of traveling the world to see every part of it she could. Not content to merely make a strong place to live, Tori saw the vast expanse of the world to be her true home, a love she passed on to those who followed along with her.

It is unclear exactly how Tori first gained her divinity, but it seems obvious that it must have been earned through bloody conflict found during her travels around the world. Nothing and no-one could stand in the way of Tori and her horde, no mortal and no beast. No-one until Inanna and Ariadne at any rate, for the vast walls of their cities and the determined unity of their people was enough to withstand the barbarian hordes of Tori – a fact that Tori took great delight in. In her mind, it gave her something to strive towards, something to aspire to and it meant that the fire in her belly would never be extinguished.

For a not insignificant amount of time, Tori was known as the god of war. That changed when her first-born daughter, Pugnemus, challenged her to battle and overthrew her through superior tactics and martial zeal. Pugnemus would go on to be known as the true war god, while Tori chose to rebrand herself with the much more comfortable title of ‘barbarian god’. It may have originally been meant as a degrading title from her daughter, but Tori wore it like a badge of honour as she went right back to raising and guiding her great hordes.

In the end, Pugnemus would challenge her mother to open battle one last time before Tori joined the other members of the Golden Pantheon in imprisonment. In spite of her savage nature, Tori was one of the few of her peers to be challenged openly rather than going down through ambush or treachery. Her second child, the travel-god Orbis Terrarum, escorted her and her horde openly to a distant part of the world to wage war with her daughter. Legend says that Tori was ultimately one of the last of the gods to be cast into the Infinitum Infernum, for her battle with her daughter raged over the course of years. Numberless swathes of soldiers and barbarians fought and died in the shadow of the two gods, their own duel leaving such a scar on the land that one cannot sleep within miles of their battleground without dreaming of the sounds of war.

There is much more to discuss, but I feel my quill-hand growing weary, thus I must rest and recover before I continue. More to follow, as we discuss Qui Verum Dicit, the god of truth – and their counterpart, Trista Mendax, the god of lies.