Divine Blood

This article was created by Tsawac Poitier, who cannot add to it.

Legends of Divine Blood
According to traditions embodied especially in the Hypermythic School, the First Gods procreated extensively, but always with terrible results. So much power subsists in any single god that the divine offspring were generally found to be monstrous and ungovernable, possessing ungovernable powers of creation and destruction but reduced capacity for reason.

So, for instance, the union of Yaca and Yamari is said to have produced Othar of the Hundred Orifices, a giant creature who extensively befouled the land around Kolikoli before being put to death by an army of human crossbowmen. Jandri, the son of Kolis and the Voiceless King, is said to have taken over Erissa and sat in its great courtyard consuming raw human flesh. It is further said that the First Gods were so disgusted by this act of semi-cannibalism that they undertook to change future procreation.

After Jandri, gods had children by two methods: either they coupled with mortals to dilute the distressing power of divinity, or they adopted a wholly human child and imbued it with divine blood through a sequence of rituals. Those children born from mortal-god couplings were generally thought to preserve some signs of divinity, such as extraordinary stature, eyes of a brighter than usual color, and the ability to kill birds on the wing with the power of thought.

While these legends of early divine marriage are often dismissed, they would explain the evidence of super-human creatures found in the Beaton Ossuary. It is the opinion of this author (however often suppressed by peer reviewers of narrow and petty imagination) that the Beaton Ossuary's first inhabitants are deceased children of the gods, who were slain by human hand due to their monstrous and dangerous nature, but were then accorded a burial of appropriate state in order to appease their parents.

People of Divine Blood in the Historical Era
Subsequent to the reign of Mondri, a number of people claimed to be of Divine Blood by way of the Godking. It is doubtful that even a ruler as prolific as Mondri could have had as many bastards as necessary to make up the count of claimants, and various tests were devised in order to separate the true from the false divine; however, these methods (such as forcing the claimant to stand in a river for three days in recapitulation of Kolis's famous exploit) were only ever tried on "Divines" who had neither wealth nor status to protect them.

After a few generations, the courts declared that it was no longer legal to claim Divine Blood status, since Mondri's descendants, if any, would now have so thoroughly mixed with ordinary mortals as to retain little of their original potency.

Articles mentioned

 * Beaton Ossuary
 * Erissa
 * First Gods
 * Jandri
 * Hypermythic School

Cited in

 * Class in the Godking Period

Lady Diane Aster