Bern
God of Death & Peace
Bern is a god of calm temperament and simple sensibilities. They preside over the afterlife, casting their angels out to protect the souls of the dead and overseeing the labor of those souls that complete their journey through the afterlife in the dead fields. They believe in the peace of death and the need for these souls to pass on in some semblance of peace. Their primary goal for this is the simple, almost zen, act of meditative labor following the journey across the afterlife. This labor serves another purpose, souls are possessed of divine energy and their work helps turn that energy towards the gods. When the souls finally are at peace and fade, the whole of the remaining energy is returned to the flow. Bern ensures that there will always be a seamless motion to the work and that the labor does not overly strain or tire, he keeps the fields flush and provides fallow, overgrown, fields to be cleared. During the winters, it is believed that Sildrin leaves the fields of the mortal world and travels to the dead fields of Bern to aid them in this task.
Bern opposes and despises the creation of greater undead. Creatures like liches or vampires are anathema to him, not simply because they defy the passage of life into death but because their unnatural death requires stealing the souls of others to sustain it. In the rare times Bern does set out to act in the world, they work to oppose these undead. Paladins of Bern hunt necromancers and undead with a fervent zeal. Though the god does not have too much concern with lesser undead like skeletons and zombies as they don’t interfere with the soul, just the remnants of an empty body.
Bern does not often act within the affairs of mortals, and they rarely leave their duties attending to the dead for any great stretch of time. But Bern is often invoked during funerary services in the hope that Bern will protect the souls of those departed and give them an afterlife of peace.
Divine Domains
Death, Harvest, the Afterlife
Comments