Amaunator

Amaunator

Amaunator (pronounced: /ɑːˈmɔːnɑːtɔːr/ ah-MAWN-ah-tor) is the Netherese solar deity of order, the sun, law, and time. He was viewed as a harsh but fair deity, revered by many rulers, soldiers, and powerful wizards in ancient Netheril.
It was eventually claimed, following the SpellPlague, that Lathander, the Faerûnian god of the sun, was an aspect of the long-dormant Amaunator. By the Year of the Ageless One, 1479 DR, Amaunator was worshiped both as Lathander and by his own name.

Description

Amaunator's avatar, whose skin sheds golden light, looks like a lanky, silver-white haired, and short man with a white tenday growth of beard clad in a long, flowing, black or purple gown with silver or gold trims, the uniform of a magistrate. He always equips himself with two tools: a scepter and a legal tome in either hand. The former is the scepter of the eternal sun, which doubles as his melee-weapon.

Personality

The Bedine believed in an entity called At'ar the Merciless. She was thought to be a spiteful woman who enjoyed an adulterous relationship. This woman was the result of stories about Amaunator becoming warped over time to the point of the entity becoming unrecognizable. The real Amaunator was a cautious god who did not just try to write down everything to be certain about it, but made sure to go through the pain of contracting, signing, sealing, and notarizing everything as well, a trait similar to the Celestial Bureaucracy.
Amaunator is viewed as a stern and unforgiving deity dedicated to law and order above all else. Though not concerned with balanced natural order like Silvanus, he instead advocates for kept promises, contracts, and even that political order be kept among the gods.

…Amaunator shall be responsible for all time. any misrepresentations of his or his followers, If so deemed the fault of Amaunator… — The mispunctuation that made Amaunator the god of time

Amaunator tends to ignore the spirit of the law in favor of the letter of it. From time to time, he has been invoked as the god of time. The reason for this being a mispunctuation in a legal paper with another god, which allows him to consider himself the god of time. That said, during the time of Netheril, he did not actually act as one, because he did not want to be on Mystryl's bad side, the actual goddess of time, albeit an unofficial one.
His adherence to law is such that he knowingly did nothing to stop the fall of Netheril because he lacked contractual power to do so. After his return, he gained the memory as a youthful deity and maintained this perspective as something valuable enough to urge his followers to do too.

Abilities

Amaunator's sight allows him to discern whether someone is a thief or lawbreaker with a glance, as well as invisible creatures and objects. He can also use his eyes to shoot flame strike or sunray every minute. The Keeper of the Eternal Sun holds sway over the sun. This gives him a plethora of protective abilities. He is completely immune to light, fire, and heat-based attacks, while enjoying complete immunity to illusions, phantasms, cold-based, shadow-based, and darkness-based spells - as well as any fear or other emotion-controlling magic.
The Yellow God is capable of dispersing magical darkness either with a touch or, as long as said darkness is within 120 yards (111 meters), with a thought. Another effect his touch creates is the instant destruction of a touched undead who are affected by sunlight. Every 2 hours, he can fill an area of 10 miles (16 kilometers) diameter for up to an hour with sunlight.
When fighting, Amaunator's avatar uses his scepter, the scepter of the eternal sun, in physical combat - but only when heavily provoked into one.
Amaunator can grant his Chosen the ability to shed searing light from allies who draw from their inner resources to invigorate themselves.

Manifestations

While male pronouns are used to describe Amaunator, he appears fairly often in the form of a woman clad in a flowing, opalescent dress with an image of a balance of practically see-through gold on it. When this manifestation appears to a person, this person can determine whether he stands in favor or disfavor of the god by looking at the scale. If it scaled to the left, he can be sure to spend the next seven years in poverty, debt, and servitude while losing his fortune. If the scale tilts to the right, the recipient of the manifestation can expect himself good fortune in the material sense. If the scales are balanced, the recipient is receiving an invitation to enter Amaunator's clergy.
Another manifestation of his are thirteen giant hyenas. These are sent by the Yellow God to punish people who deserve such, or to avenge people who do not have the ability to do it themselves. When these hyenas appear, the offender is killed by them and the body is ripped apart to cover 1 acre.
Favored animals of Amaunator include tan dogs, cream-colored cats, pure white wolves, birds of prey - especially sunfalcons - and white stallions, which are sent to show his favor or disfavor. The Keeper of the Eternal Sun's favored monsters are emerald dragons, sapphire dragons, steel dragons, golems, and takos. His favored minerals are topaz or any red-colored gem. His favored plants are yellow-eyed daisies, sunflowers, and golden lilies.

Possessions

Amaunator's avatar wears a magistrate's uniform and holds in each hand a legal tome and a scepter, the scepter of the eternal sun. He once owned an oak staff with astral diamonds at the base and a sun-shaped one on the head that was worth 23,000 gp.

Divine Realm

Amaunator's divine realm, the Keep of the Eternal Sun, used to be on Mechanus. He lost enough followers with the fall of Netheril to die of neglect. His death robbed his ability to maintain his divine realm and his corpse was ejected to the Astral Plane. Once he came back to life, he created the astral dominion Eternal Sun and lived there with Siamorphe and Waukeen.

Activities

Amaunator preaches that people need to follow laws to the letter. The reason for this is the belief that laws are the foundation on which any society is built on and disrespecting law will inevitably cause the collapse of any society. The same adherence is also extended to traditions.
The Yellow God's also teaches that people must familiarize themselves with law to get an understanding of how to act in a proper manner to save them from getting punished. He also wants people to be organized individuals, who meet their commitments and are always on time.
His message extends to hierarchies that mortals have made for themselves. The Keeper of the Eternal Sun teaches his followers to adhere to their superiors. The idea behind this being that faithful service yields rewards, while failure to do so punishment. That said, people are told to keep tabs on their superiors' decisions. This is to increase the number of precedents to draw from and help to standardize rulings and with it the relevance of Amaunator's message.

Relationships

Deities

Amaunator presides as judge over the Pantheon Contour in the Netherese pantheon. He was named the god of time on the basis of a mispunctuation. He never acted on this claim for he did not want to be on bad footing with Mystryl who was the goddess of time in practice. After returning, he has been served by Siamorphe as his exarch and lives with Waukeen on his astral domain Eternal Sun. It is rumored that he finds Sune attractive.

Worshipers

Priests of Amaunator encourage the establishment of lawful order and bureaucracy in the world at large. They are called on to witness contracts and apply a signatory stamp with the symbol of Amaunator to verify its validity.

History

Before Karsus's Folly

Amaunator was a greater deity during the days of ancient Netheril. He was the one who judged over the Pantheon Contour, an agreement between deities.

After Karsus's Folly

When Netheril fell, Amaunator's worshiper-base shrunk to Netheril's lower and middle classes. These people abandoned his faith for they believed that he knowingly did nothing to stop the disaster. They were correct. The reason why the Yellow God did nothing being he had no legal basis to do so. Per divine contract, magic was Mystryl's domain, on which he had no right to infringe upon. With his worshiper-base gone, his faith continued to shrink over the time. He dropped from greater deity-status to lesser deity-status and from there to dead power-status over a millennium. His inability to maintain his divine realm caused it to cease existing and the Keeper of the Eternal Sun became one of the corpses on the Astral Plane. This all would have happened around 661 DR, for the fall of Netheril was in −339 DR.
On the mortals' side, various theories have been concocted to explain Amaunator's non-existence. Starting with having moved to somewhere other than Faerûn, like another world or Kara-Tur's pantheon to having become or absorbed by something else like At'ar the Merciless or Lathander.
Belief in Amaunator lived on in at least three different ways. First, the Bedine belief of At'ar, the Merciless. This was the result of Netherese survivors telling stories about the Yellow God to the Bedine, which then were twisted over time into that of a woman who was married to Kozah but pursued an adulterous relationship with N'asr. This belief received no divine support and At'ar had no clerics. The second was belief in Amaunator himself. This belief in a dead deity experienced divine support and had active clerics. Provided the clerics learnt the art of a servant of the fallen, the dead god could supply those people with spells. The third was the belief in one of Lathander's heresies, either the Three-Faced Sun heresy or the Risen Sun heresy. The former was the idea that the sun was an overgod who had two aspects that were possible objects of worship for mortals. Not all, but some believed that Amaunator would return to resume his role as one of these two aspects. The second heresy was the idea that Lathander was the reincarnated form of Amaunator. By the 14th century DR, these radicals believed that Lathander revealing himself as Amaunator was close. Faced with this heresy, Lathander had three options, accept it and turn it into the effective truth, reject it and lose potential worshipers, or let it be and gain more worshipers at the cost of his authority losing its weight. He chose the last one.

Return of Amaunator

In 1371/1372 DR, high-ranked clerics and paladins of Lathander began to receive messages regarding a mysterious event called the "Deliverance", leading them to begin an aggressive recruitment campaign. It was not clear whether this had anything to do with Amaunator.
Amaunator's return was heralded by a fire genasi called Daelegoth Orndeir. The man was a believer in the aforementioned Risen Sun heresy and made it his goal to make it the mainstream branch of Lathander's church. He strengthened his base and power in intra-church politics, developed the Amaunator's eternal sun spell, and managed to get hold over the Shard of the Sun, a holy relic of Amaunator. He claimed he had seen visions that Amaunator's ascension was nigh and gathered his people to Elversult to witness the sign of the ascension in 1374 DR. The sign he referred to were the effects of the Amaunator's eternal sun spell, which he developed beforehand. This made people believe him and people flocked to the church of Lathander to join the church of Amaunator while the leaders of Lathander's church were not sure what to do.
Lathander was revealed to be Amaunator in the Year of Blue Fire, 1385 DR, just after the Spellplague. It was not clear whether it was the truth or he embraced a heresy and turned it into the effective truth.

Post-Spellplague Era

After the Spellplague, Amaunator became an established greater deity of the Faerûnian pantheon. He fulfilled the role of timekeeper among the gods. He had people who primarily worshiped him as Lathander, his youthful aspect - something Amaunator actively encouraged.
The city of Elturel has benefited from a shining globe that has been accredited to Amaunator. However, it is unclear whether the god had anything to do with the sphere. The only one who knows the answer is the High Observer of the city.

Post-Second Sundering

In 1486 DR, Lathander returned according to his Chosen Stedd Whitehorn. By the year 1491 DR, Amaunator and Lathander were once again worshiped as separate beings. It is unknown if they are actually separate beings this time, or if one is the aspect of the other.

Rumors & Legends

Heresies

The church of Lathander is not without its notable heresies, including the Risen Sun heresy and the Three-Faced Sun heresy, both of which were prominently focused on the return of Amaunator. The former proved true when Amaunator returned.

Astronomy

Amaunator's belt is a constellation that appears in the sky above the Spine of the World during the summer.