Divine Avatars

When events in any of Kelbonnar’s planes of existence require direct intervention from one of the Divines, but the Divine in question is indisposed or perhaps even too fearful for their own safety to help directly, they create and send out and Avatar to act in their stead. These beings are far more powerful than any paladin or cleric, but they are short-lived and if directed poorly can be highly destructive.

Summary

In the years before the outbreak of the Divine War the Divines of Kelbonnar were known to travel across all of Kelbonnar’s planes of existence, happy to directly observe, interact and intercede wherever and whenever they saw fit. Whilst first-hand intervention by the Divines was by no means a regular occurrence; on the whole they tend to prefer to leave matters to their mortal servants, only interceding themselves in especially dangerous or dire circumstances, it was known to happen and over many millennia, many tales of the in person actions of the Divines have risen and spread as a result of their actions.
However, the outbreak of the Divine War has led the Divines to become more cautious with regards to where they travel, with the result that they no longer travel the planes as they once did. Indeed, since the The Death of Melchis, few Divines will now travel without a large escort of Celestial Guards, and some even now fear to set foot out of their strongholds in the Celestial Plane without an army at their backs.
This means that the onus of enacting the desire of the gods and goddesses falls almost exclusively on the shoulders of their mortal clerics and paladins, but even with the powers that they have been granted by their deity, there will always be tasks which are too insurmountable or too dangerous for them to overcome. To tackle this problem, whilst ensuring that the Divines themselves do not have to risk their own lives or threaten to derail their plans for the Divine War, the gods and goddesses developed a way of creating Avatars of themselves, to walk the planes of existence on their behalf.
The creation of these Avatars is a long and complex process, but the result is a being, neither mortal nor divine who has been imbued with such a strong portion of their Divine’s power that it is believed that they should be able to best anything other than a deity, or one of the lords of the lower planes themselves. The Divines will normally only create Avatars in extreme circumstances, as the process requires them to expend much energy, which will take them a while to recover from, along with a mortal with a number of particular characteristics, namely and extremely resilient constitution, great willpower and no ties to any other deity or other creature that might be able to claim their soul. If one of these is not right, it will result in the death of the host and the wasting of the deity’s power.
In addition, whilst the sheer amount of power that an Avatar is imbued with does make them a force to be reckoned with, with the most powerful even giving lesser Divines pause for thought, it is also far more than any mortal can ensure for very long. Most Avatars live little more than a decade or so, before their body is so ravaged that they die and the power they were imbued with is released and flows back to the Divine from whence it came.

Spread

Knowledge of and belief in Avatars and the stories that accompany them is widespread, and exists in almost every culture on every plane of Kelbonnar. The extent to how much a given community believes them to be real very much depends on how long ago in their history that they were exposed to one. Settlements and even whole cultures who have not seen an Avatar for many thousands of years are much more likely to believe that they are a fictional demonstration of a Divine's power rather than a reality.

Variations & Mutation

Some theologians have drawn upon rumour and hearsay to hypothesise that Avatars can sometimes be created inadvertently by the Divines. These accidental creations are said to occur either when a Divine is in a deep, nightmare afflicted sleep, or when they enter a deep slumber in a high emotional state. Of course a mortal with the right characteristics has to be close enough for a Divine to sense whilst they are in one of these sleep states, which makes the chances of it happening rather unlikely, but it is thought by some to be possible.
The greatest case in support of this theory is linked to the goddess Wresmella, who was said to have been walking on the Material Plane, and was given hospitality for the night in the camp of a nomadic tribe. Whilst she slept, she had an awful nightmare, which caused her to accidentally create an Avatar, who rose up and went on a murderous rampage, trying to kill the creatures that assailed their divine mistress in her sleep. Fortunately the mortal host was not quite strong enough to sustain the power placed into them and they only lasted a few hours before being torn apart by Wresmella’s power, but not before they killed many innocent people.

In Literature

Because of the sheer power that Avatars have at their disposal and the fact that they normally appear in times of great crisis they routinely find their way into historical records. There are several well documented incidents of Avatars and their activities that have taken place during the Divine War, principally records of them participating in battles between the Divines and their Celestial hosts, but also accounts of them being charged with discreet missions by their creating deity to further the war effort for the side they belong to.
Older accounts of Avatars that pre-date the Divine War are harder to come by and those that do exist are instead treated as being myths and legends rather than historical accounts. Avatars most frequently crop up in moralising tales, where they appear to serve divine punishment to those who have wronged the deities of Kelbonnar, or who are covetous of their power.

In Art

It is hard to tell exactly how often Avatar’s appear in artwork, or whether they even appear at all. Depictions of the Divines as created by the mortal races tend to focus on the symbols or animals that represent each deity in question, so that there is no mistaking them for a mortal or lesser being within the artwork. Often in situations where an Avatar may be present in an artistic scene, artists decide to simply represent the deity themselves. As an Avatar is an extension of their creating deity after all, it is still the deity themselves who is at work and responsible for whatever an Avatar may be depicted doing. In addition, without an appropriate artistic shorthand to indicate an Avatar, it is likely that most observers of an artwork depicting an Avatar would simply default to believing that they are either viewing a depiction of a deity, or one of their mortal servants anyway, so it is clearer to not try to specifically depict an Avatar.

Date of First Recording

Unknown

Date of Setting

Appearances of Avatars still occur periodically.

Related Species

• Divines