Slaver Gods & the Golden Teachers

Death of the Gods of Vedalken

Work in progress

Known as a race without gods, vedalken have a indifferent to few that are downright hostile view towards religion. Religious factions and their ideas are encountered with great suspicion, something very different to most of the humanoids. What made it so?

While some vedalken argue simply, that they feel more comfortable at believing in themselves and not to trust in fickle entities, some might be ready to depart the ancient legend, where the vedalken murder their cruel gods.

Summary

The myths of the Vedalken tell, that in the beginning, there were the cruel Slaver Gods. Gods created the Vedalken as their servants, to be the cattle to do their work, and to protect themselves from harm. Greatest of them lived in deepest depths, never to be seen by light.

These massive beings would need the vedalken to be sacrificed to them if they could find other creatures to please their wrath and thirsts, and the vedalken lived in fear and with no mind or thoughts of their own. Those who served their Gods well would be promoted to be priests of their masters, to judge and rule over the rest with their minds forever connected to the Slavers.

But the saviours would come, the beings known as the Golden Teachers. The Golden Teacher came from a tear in the sky, thousands of them, to right the wrongs of the evil that consumed the land. These beings came and vanquished the cruel gods, one by one while taking the vedalkens under their tutelage, teaching them to survive, think and fight off the tyrannical Gods.

Together with the Golden, vedalken destroyed the Slaver Gods and promised to the Golden they would destroy the Gods again if they ever came back from the depths. As a reward, Golden gave would give Vedalken some of their wisdom, before continuing their hunt of the wicked.

Historical Basis

In Dalvia, true origin of the myth remains unknown. Many temporary vedalken see it as a little more than a story to scare little children with, while some are still interested in the mystery of it. Folklorists have tried to interpret the myth in different ways, but there are no conclusive explanations about its source.

The untold true history behind the legends (Spoilers)

In the distant history, Dalvia had a very successful, terrifying colony of Mind flayers. These tyrannical hosts chose themself a prefered slave race, they started to breed to be both perfect slaves, but also delicious meals for them, and eventually, the perfect hosts for their offspring. It is this race that became the Vedalken.

During their reign, colonies spread, and more Elder Brains came to be, and they ruled over the vedalken as their gods and the mind flayers as the tentacles of those gods. Any connection they might have had to any deity previously was lost in time, as the vedalken slaves were broken by their cruel masters. Only deity left in their lives was Ilsensine, god of the mind flayers and their Elder Brains.

In a point in time, the Gith arrived in Dalvia and took out the colonies, saving vedalkens from their misery. Some of them stayed to make sure that vedalkens would be rehabilitated to their new lives, before moving on. From these events, the legends of the Slaver Gods and the Golden Teachers came to be. No mind flayers have been seen in Dalvia since.

Cultural Reception

After these dawn times, vedalkens have not kept any gods. They do, however, venerate the Golden ones as a source of philosophy and wisdom. True the stories vedalken have taken a philosophy to trust themselves and their own capabilities, pursue free-thinking, and forever evolve in their capabilities, seeing all errors and faults as opportunities to learn and explore.

Darkness, cold, tendrils and places both deep underwater and deep underground still have a strong cultural association to evil and unpleasant things. Anything with tendrils or tentacles is seen with deep suspicion, to a point where some more superstitious groups have taboos about how - if ever - one can eat meat of a creature like a squid.

For other races of Dalvia with more warm relations with their gods, vedalkens' story is bizarre and even frightening, making some consider them more like fiends than mortals.

In Art

In some old art pieces, mostly in stone carvings, the Slavers were depicted in ancient art as massive creatures, similar to medusas with long-reaching tendrils, sometimes holding vedalken on those tendrils. In some depictions, there are multiple slavers, forming a web-like pattern as they reach to hold one another with those tendrils. Vedalken would be shown mindlessly serving and worshipping them and making sacrifices to them.

Priests of the Slavers were depicted as wearing squid-like masks and informing the vedalken from the requirements of their masters. No remnants of such masks have remained to current generations.

Related Ethnicities