Vortigern

God of War and Conflict

Pronunciation - /VOR-ti-guhrn/

“No warrior is too wounded to fight, if they fight for a cause greater than their life. Now pick up my arm soldier, I will need that back once I kill this abomination.” - Vortigern

Not meant to fulfill any role beyond ending Facit’s ambitions of freedom, Vortigern has since taken it upon himself to oversee the wars and skirmishes that have erupted between the mortal races in the years following the Great Flood.
When the Dynamo-Lord attempted to break free, Shiwa reluctantly answered the call to instruct Oum to create something powerful enough to stop him. The result was a rabid, animal thing of void-black metal and the incarnate concept of violence. It catapulted at the first being in sight, the nearly-liberated Facit.
With a newly awakened conscience to restrain his world-shattering anger, Vortigern struggled with his very much unwanted existence as a God of Conflict. And this was not limited to him. Conflict has existed long before Vortigern’s creation, and neither the bitter grudge Deshai held for Shiwa nor the brief cataclysm that was the Elven Subjugation needed a deity to oversee it. The Mistress of the Archives had simply thrown Vortigern together to force Facit into an intractable stalemate so Icae could complete her spell, and gave him morals for no reason other than to put a stop to his rampage without having to go through the trouble of disassembling him. There was no place for him in the grand scheme of things. The subsequent creation of Atvocat, immediately after the crisis was over, for the sake of preventing his aura of rage from affecting the species of the world only confirmed this. He was a tool, now discarded and left to rust.
In time, as the survivors emerged from their refuge to start putting the world back together, conflict began to brew. It started small, just back and forth raids between hunter-gatherers with flint spears and rawhide. But as society evolved, so did the means by which people fought each other. They set rules and guidelines that dictated was acceptable, vague and unspoken things at first that relied on a common sense of basic decency but soon became something more permanent. They began to dress up the violence in pomp and pageantry, to make it more palatable to engage in. Conflict had always existed. But war? War was a social construct. A mortal construct. And watching it all like an enthralled child was Vortigern.
He set about proclaiming himself as Guardian of the Material Plane, and some say this was when the secrets to the warforged were let loose upon mortal minds, made in Vortigern’s image to be his hands upon Argent, marching out from the newly placed fortress-city of Helmhawk. It is also this point in time where knighthood and similar concepts took root in the cultures of Argent as Vortigern’s warriors roamed the world slaying monsters and guarding the helpless.
But as civilisation grew under the protective aegis of Vortigern, conflict began to erupt to varying degrees all over the world. He wished to put a stop to it, but found he could not give the order, as it conflicted with his primary domain.

Divine Domains

Clerics of Vortigern have access to the Courage, Hunt, Retribution, and War domains when choosing their path.

Divine Symbols & Sigils

There are as many variations of holy symbols for Vortigern as there are means of fighting. Though the imagery it is often limited to the following subjects:

• The battle between Vortigern and Facit.
• The endless struggle between his righteous ideals and his very real urge to kill everything.
• Some tactic or specific way of fighting that is reflected in a particular aspect of Vortigern, highly dependent on the sect’s preferred methods of war.

Tenets of Faith

• Trust in your own strength before any other. To do otherwise is to embrace weakness.
• There is no shame in fighting with one’s mind. A cunning stratagem is as valid as a strong arm.
• Stoke not the fires of war for the sake of honouring the divine. People are perfectly capable of doing it themselves.
• When evil rears its head, reject apathy and do what must be done.
• Should your foe conduct themselves with honour, do likewise unto them.

Physical Description

Physical quirks

His body constantly trembles with a barely restrained energy that is at odds with his calm demeanor when his fury is under control, and completely in character when his fury is not under control.

Special abilities

Vortigern’s surroundings are affected by an aura whose effects are subject to which side of him is dominant at the moment. When his nobility is in control, he imparts courage onto those around him. Courage to stand by their beliefs, not simply courage in fighting an enemy. But when he is lost to his rage, this aura is twisted such the it instills unreasoning fury and bloodlust instead. Those in his immediate vicinity during such a period will kill anything and everything they can get their hands on, gouging their own flesh if they cannot.
Vortigern’s body is capable of perfectly morphing into any shape and appearance he desires, growing and shrinking in mass and volume at will. He often uses this to walk among the mortal races, masquerading as a traveling knight-errant, roving ranger or any other sort of fighting man.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Facit was about to tear himself free from his prison; so close to launching himself into the void faster than light, and his tormentors could follow. So close to finally being able to do... when a mass of metal roaring a perpetual machine howl of insane fury came hurtling at him swinging every weapon conceivable. The beleaguered god lashed out, grappled, and desperately resisted this screaming thing that rent and impaled his form with the force to shatter continents. All that his efforts managed was a single broken gemstone. They were roughly equal in power, but Facit’s lack of focus was his defeat, as his foe focused solely on breaking him.
Near his end, Facit’s thoughts sharpened to a single, excruciating point. He screamed in pain and existential horror as this newborn god tore him asunder, for he thought that he would die, unable to do anything ever again.
Perhaps, given more time, the Beast might actually have killed Facit. What would have happened had such an event come to pass? Could it even be possible? Such questions are academic, as Icae cast her spell and locked Facit away once more within the Source. The thing that would be Vortigern turned and plummeted toward the world around him to complete its total destruction of all that stood in his path. In response, Shiwa snapped her fingers; what was once a monster, now Vortigern, opened his eyes to the horror he was about to cause.

Morality & Philosophy

To understand Vortigern’s moral code, one need look no further than the code of chivalry that the majority of knights, especially the Warforged among them, adhere to. As much as his domain permits, he attempts to do good: bending his innate desire for violence towards protecting the powerless from the numerous threats that populate existence. Ultimately, he is meant to be a god of war in all its aspects, and hence much of his scripture accommodates as many of the methods employed as possible.

Divine Classification

Lesser Deity

Religions

• The Vortigernii

Gender

N/A

Eyes

N/A

Hair

N/A

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Black Metallic Sheen

Height

12'

Related Myths

• Not His Sword