Beryl
| |
| Beryl, The Golden Man | |
|---|---|
| Domains | Wealth, prosperity, business, mathematics, shipbuilders, trade, negotiation, bread, gold |
| Subsidiaries: |
|
| Additional Symbols | tower, mathematics compass, calipers, wind-filled sail |
| Colors or Aesthetics | Gold and indigo |
Overview
Beryl is the god of wealth and money. He is a very popular god with cults in major trading cities throughout the Thracian world and beyond. He is the god who oversees businessmen and their successes, who favors one with wealth achieved by effort (whereas Valerian is responsible for wealth as a result of good fortune). Beryl is not necessarily an extremely kind god, nor one who is associated with fairness. He is thought to be fond of wealth and fond of those who will go to great lengths to get it, so long as they give him his due. He is unimpressed by the plight of the less fortunate, considering their troubles to be the tasks of other gentler gods, whereas he is the ultimate, theoretically dispassionate expression of greatness as demonstrated by that sure measure of success, wealth. He is sacrificed to not only by those who love and worship him on a deeply personal level, but also by those who feel he might mistreat them if they don't at least give him something. While he is not vengeful or hateful, he is not an effusively generous or supportive god, and he is vain of his powers and of his own prosperity. He counts and numbers his worshipers, and even developed elaborate new ways to account for them, becoming a lord of educated mathematics as well as the money you can gain by using it. He loves and prizes success, but can be pitiless with regard to failure.
Mythology
Beryl is the son of Thorin and Valerian. He has a great deal of his father's arrogance and his mother's mercurial indifference to mortal well-being. Stern, distant, rewarding of ambition, Beryl has had to overcome a number of misfortunes to achieve his own greatness and is sternly proud of himself about them, though his mother did sometimes blow the winds of fate one way or another as he tried. Coming into being with an analytical mind, Thorin sought to gain advantage over his fellow gods at every turn. He became skilled in rhetoric, convincing them to aid him or invest in his projects. He pushed to encourage mortals to have more knowledge so that they could better exalt the gods, all the while seeking to have them exalt him above any of the others. He maneuvered Coron to teach them how to build cities and great sailing ships to expand their horizions, and all so that he would be more beloved. Beryl could sometimes be blind to the inner quality of a thing when its exterior was beautiful and powerful, a shortcoming he ably demonstrated by bedding Beshaba, who was very beautiful but also very cruel. This brought about the child Sordos, but Sordos demanded his father give him wealth and worshippers, and Beryl would not. Sordos then declared he would take what he needed from the mortal world and not let anyone stand in his way, and his mother, out of spite, helped him to do so. Beryl swore to not be so deceived by appearances, and his followers pride themselves on not being taken in by finery alone. Beryl has two children of other, less unfortunate liasons. His eldest, Tychos, was the son of an ancient queen, and after demanding he complete a series of dangerous trials Beryl gave Tychos charge of the building of mortal cities. His second child was the daughter of a mighty empress. Beryl did not know of her until she had learned to treasure extravagance and excess above all other things, at which point he took her away and keeps her secluded from mortals. Plutana frequently escapes her father's edict, however, and shares her enthusiasm for wealth without bounds with many mortal creatures, even those amongst her fathers most devoted. He doesn't entirely disapprove of extravagance, he just can't convince her that other things are ALSO important, and the two of them are routinely at odds. During the time before the birth of Verax and Vindikari when many gods fought with one another, Beryl would have sought to make himself a king over all the gods were it not for one thing: he did not believe he could defeat Aldrin politically without Aldrin moving the conflict into the realm of battle. His machinations to try and undermine Aldrin were very destructive and ended only with the advent of divine law at the hands of the twins. Aldrin and Beryl still do not get along.
Worship
Simple Devotions
Stuff
Major Religious Centers
Widely popular in coastal and trading cities along the Berylian coast (go figure), a remarkable temple of Beryl can be found in Zenova, Abruzzo, and perhaps the most extravagent is located in Baan, Helvetia. Any given temple to Beryl tends to be constructed in the peak of architectural fashion for its era, so the Zenova temple is very gothic, while the Baan temple is very baroque.
Formal Orders
Stuff
Presence in Alba
Stuff
