Thassa (God of the Seas)

Thassa is the god of The Sea, aquatic creatures, and the unknown depths. She also holds sway over less tangible concepts such as ancient knowledge, long voyages, and gradual change. Impassive and slow to anger, Thassa is secure in the knowledge that there are no mortals and few gods who can threaten her status. Once her ire is aroused, however, it is as unstoppable as a cresting wave. She often speaks in the future tense, referring to what tomorrow will bring. She seldom laughs, and when she does, it is usually out of smugness rather than genuine mirth.
Thassa usually appears to mortals in the form of a female triton-like being with octopus-tentacle hair and a crown of crab legs. She seldom adopts the same size as her followers, preferring to be seen from a distance as she towers over the ocean. When she moves closer to the view of mortals, she takes many other forms, often shifting from one to another: a giant squid, an ocean storm, a school of sharks, a fog bank, or a crab, her Favored animal. She sometimes speaks out of the ocean itself, in droplets hissing across the surface of the waves.

Thassa’s Influence

To most mortals, Thassa is The Sea, and The Sea is Thassa. The wind and waves, the tides, and the ocean's bounty, ranging from small fish to the enormous krakens—all these are Thassa's dominion. The Sea has many metaphorical aspects that Thassa oversees as well: ancient knowledge, long-term change, introspection, voyaging, and repetitive patterns such as the tides.
Thassa governs the slow changes wrought by the Passage of time, such as the weathering of rocks and the erosion of beaches. Where Nylea controls the eternal cycle of the Seasons and Kruphix monitors the flow of time, Thassa holds sway over the slow-acting but irresistible forces that alter the world over hundreds or thousands of years.
Krakens and other behemoths of the deepest oceans move at Thassa's Command. She is protective of what she calls the greatest of her children, and she usually keeps them out of harm's way in the darkest depths. A mighty Kraken sighted close to shore is a sure sign of Thassa's displeasure.

Thassa’s Goals

Thassa is never satisfied with the status quo, and she also never advocates hasty, uncontrolled change. She constantly resculpts the physical world, altering coastlines and upending familiar trade routes. There is no ultimate goal to this ongoing transformation; the Purpose is change itself. Thassa believes that change is essential to existence, and she opposes anyone who tries to establish or maintain a permanent order to the universe. She aids and inspires forces of change, the rivers that wear down mountains and the tides that claim whole continents. She sometimes seems disinterested in the intrigues of the present, even in her own current schemes, as her thoughts drift toward what the future holds.

Divine Relationships

Thassa disdains the shortsightedness of her fellow gods, most of whom have convinced themselves that they can impose lasting order on the cosmos. At the same time, her realm is unassailable, and she believes that the changes she advocates are inevitable in the long term. So although Thassa frequently disagrees with the other gods, she doesn't fear them.
Heliod considers Thassa his favorite sibling, despite her unwillingness to agree with his plan for a permanent order. Thassa, who rules depths that have never seen the sun, considers most of Heliod's schemes pointless and opposes them if they seem to threaten harm.
Thassa took pity on Purphoros and aided him when Kruphix hobbled his mind, and Purphoros has Not Forgotten it. The two of them agree that old things must make way for new things, but Purphoros's bursts of destructive energy stand in sharp opposition to Thassa's gradual alterations. Purphoros regularly makes gifts for Thassa, most recently gifting her a new spear to replace her lost weapon.
Thassa has little use for the gods who oversee work she believes best left to mortals: Ephara with her cities, Karametra with her fields, Pharika with her tinctures, Mogis and Iroas with their armies. To Thassa's mind, her peers are building castles in the sand, unaware or unmindful that the tide will sweep them away.

Worshiping Thassa

Most of Thassa's dedicated worshipers are tritons, and the vast majority of tritons are wholly devoted to Thassa. Tritons spend much of their lives in Thassa's realm, with their god omnipresent. They weave prayers to Thassa into nearly everything they do.
Among Humans, Thassa is worshiped by those who rely on bountiful seas for sustenance or calm waters for safety. Sailors, fishers, and residents of Theros's coasts and islands all pay her at least nominal respect and sacrifice. Her center of Worship on land is in the Coastal polis of Meletis, where sailors and Philosophers pray to her for Guidance. The week-long Lyokymion festival (the Feast of the Melting Swell) marks the start of the new year by celebrating the bounty of The Sea.
Thassa's most fervent human worshipers offer prayers at high and low tide. If possible, they do so at the water's edge. At low tide they walk barefoot out onto the tidal flats, relishing the touch of Thassa's seabed.

Myths of Thassa

Tales about Thassa typically demonstrate that she is often patient, but never kind.

Callaphe the False

During the last great Silence of the gods, a Triton appeared, impersonated a mariner named Callaphe, and traveled the waves aboard Callaphe’s living ship, The Monsoon. This false Callaphe misled the tritons with false prophecies and pulled a Kraken from the depths, hoping to harness his power. When the Silence was lifted and Thassa returned to the world, she struck the Impostor down with such fury that she shattered her bident. Purphoros, remembering Thassa’s kindness to him on many occasions, replaced her sacred weapon.

Dreams in the Deep

While Purphoros is renowned for his endless creations and desires to bring new ideas into being, Thassa secretly shares similar creative desires. Endlessly bored with the predictable denizens of the land and sky, in the deepest ocean trenches, Thassa wills immortal dreams and nightmares into being. Delicate beauty, undulating grace, and tentacular terrors are birthed in the absolute dark, iterate for generations, and suffer swift extinctions at the god’s whim, never knowing the sun’s touch. Sapient mortals aren’t welcome in these maddening ateliers; Thassa remains bitterly unwilling to reveal her work until her creations—and the time—are absolutely perfect.

Every Tear The Sea

Few myths tell of those who escaped Thassa’s wrath. This isn’t one of them. When the infamous explorer Rasiao failed to steal one of Thassa’s Tidelock Pearls, wave-controlling Treasures protected by Vicious mollusks, she spent years avoiding the waves before finding her way back to the mainland. Although she’d failed to abscond with one of Thassa’s Treasures, she’d avoided The Sea god’s wrath, a claim she valued more preciously than gold. For years, Rasiao lived far from ocean or river, making her home in the driest reaches of Theros. She lived a long life, but on one trip to Akros to Resupply and brag, she drowned in a bowl of ox stew. Those who found Rasiao discovered a pearl, too large to pass her lips, lodged in her mouth. Fearing further reprisal, Rasiao’s daughters committed their mother’s body to the Deyda River and Thassa’s clutches. The explorer’s daughters never forgot that just as countless drops make The Sea, so too is every raindrop, tear, and cup part of Thassa’s domain.

Thief’s Fate

According to legend, a mortal Sailor once stole Thassa’s bident and used it to sink an enemy fleet. Thassa cared nothing for the vanquished fleet, but punished the Sailor for his thievery by turning his Family into eels. The Sailor tried to care for the eels, but they blamed him for their fate and disappeared into The Sea, leaving the Sailor weeping on the shore.