Gond - God of Earth, Metal, and Artisans

The Wonderbringer, the Inspiration Divine, the Holy Maker of All Things; Gond is the god of artifice, craft, and construction. He is revered by blacksmiths, woodworkers, engineers, and inventors. Anyone who is crafting something might say a prayer to Gond to guide the work, but folk know that Gond smiles most brightly upon new inventions that others find useful. He rules the raw creative force that infuses sapient minds. As a forge radiates heat in the area around it, Gond’s influence provides inspiration to mortals. He makes exquisitely crafted objects almost constantly, sometimes absentmindedly working while he holds conversations with the other gods, only to destroy the finished product and begin again. Impulsive and mercurial, Gond is prone to bouts of either joyous productivity or frustrated anger. He often feels constrained by the limits of imagination, yearning to realize ideas that seem just out of reach.
Priests of Gond wander the Much of Esseas dressed in saffron vestments, adorned with sashes that contain within their folds gears, locks, hooks, and bits of steel, tin, and wood that might prove useful in a pinch. They also wear belts of large, linked metal medallions and enormous sun hats. A traveling priest of Gond offers services to distant villages as a tinker, a carpenter, and a civil engineer rolled into one, ready to help build a better paddock gate, dig a new well, or mend pots or furniture that might otherwise go to waste. All priests of Gond keep journals in which they record ideas, inventions, and innovations discovered in their travels, and take great delight in meeting fellow priests and sharing their finds. In large cities, the Gondar construct temples that serve as great workshops and inventors’ labs. Wandering priests turn their journals over to the resident scribes at such temples, who then record the priests’ observations for posterity and the benefit of all.
The center of Gond’s worship on Esseas resides in the Grand Duchies of Aranoc, where the faithful have erected two huge structures in honor of the Wonderbringer: a temple called the High House of Wonders and a museum of craft and design called the Hall of Arcane Creation, both in the city of Galtover.

Depictions

Gond’s preferred form is that of a muscular man whose coal-hued skin is mostly covered in mutable organic bronze, wielding a smithing hammer and smock. He might also appear in the form of a fiery phoenix or a bull made of cooling magma. When angered, he might appear as an enormous mass of lava, a blazing fire, or a volcanic eruption. Mortals who see Gond in one of those forms seldom live to tell about it. His symbol is that of a Cog.

Champions of Gond

Alignment: Usually chaotic, often neutral
Suggested Classes: Barbarian, bard, cleric, fighter, sorcerer
Suggested Cleric Domains: Forge, Knowledge, Tempest, Order
Suggested Backgrounds: Acolyte, entertainer, guild artisan
Most champions of Gond are unswerving advocates of passion and creativity who change the world by doing what they believe is right in the moment.