The Dreaming of Gods

We speak of gods as if they were distant, enthroned in heavens beyond our reach. This is comforting, for it absolves us of proximity to the terrible. But know that Taninsam and Tohu sleep beneath the mountains of Thorsheim, close enough that their dreams ripple through reality. When gods dream, worlds tremble.

- Whispered among the Seers of the Obsidian Circle, who watch the patterns of divine slumber and warn of the stirrings within

I. When Taninsam and Tohu chose to remain in Aedelore while their siblings departed for distant creations, they faced a dilemma. Divine consciousness, fully awake, warps reality around it. They could not walk among their creation without changing it by their very presence.

II. Know that this is why they chose to sleep. Not from weariness - gods do not tire - but from love. Their waking would have overwhelmed the delicate patterns they had woven. In sleep, they could remain close without destroying what they cherished.

III. Yet the sleep of gods is not the sleep of mortals. When you sleep, your consciousness withdraws from the world. When a god sleeps, their consciousness expands, becoming diffuse, touching everything without grasping anything.

IV. Taninsam's dreams are fire and passion. When he dreams of joy, the summers are warm and the harvests abundant. When he dreams of rage, volcanoes wake and wildfires race across the land.

V. Know that the great eruption of Mount Cinder, three centuries past, was not natural catastrophe. Taninsam dreamed of the First War, and his sleeping anger found expression through stone and flame.

VI. Tohu's dreams are subtler but no less powerful. She dreams in patterns and possibilities, in connections and transformations. When her dreams shift, the currents of magic shift with them.

VII. There are mages who have learned to read these shifts - to sense when Tohu's dreaming mind turns toward certain types of magic, making them easier to work. They call themselves the Dream-Readers.

VIII. Know that the gods dream of mortals as mortals dream of gods. In their vast sleeping minds, the lives of races flicker like candle flames - brief, beautiful, endlessly fascinating.

IX. Sometimes a mortal catches the attention of a dreaming god. This is both blessing and curse. To be dreamed by Taninsam is to burn with purpose, to feel passions that threaten to consume. To be dreamed by Tohu is to see patterns others cannot, to know things that perhaps should remain unknown.

X. The gods can be woken. This has happened twice in recorded history - once during the First War, when Taninsam rose in wrath, and once more, it is whispered, during an event so terrible that its memory was deliberately erased from all records.

XI. Know that waking a god is not like waking a mortal. There is no gentle transition. Divine consciousness, compressed from its dream-state, snaps into focused awareness with force enough to shatter mountains.

XII. Those near a god's waking often do not survive. The priests who called Taninsam forth during the First War were consumed in the first instant of his awakening - not from malice, but from the sheer impossibility of mortal flesh enduring such proximity to the divine.

XIII. Yet there are those who seek to wake the gods deliberately. Some act from desperation, believing only divine intervention can save them. Others act from madness, seeking power they cannot comprehend.

XIV. Know that the dreaming of gods serves a purpose beyond mere rest. In their dreams, they maintain the fundamental patterns of reality. The rising of the sun, the turning of seasons, the flow of magic - all are held in place by divine dreaming.

XV. If both gods woke fully and remained awake, reality itself would begin to fray. The patterns would lose their anchor. This is why they take turns in the depths of sleep and the shallows of dreaming.

XVI. The Halflings, closest to the dreaming earth, sometimes catch glimpses of divine dreams. They speak of vast visions - of creation and destruction, of love and loss, of patterns too large for mortal minds to hold.

XVII. Let the wise approach the sleeping gods with reverence. Pray, but do not demand. Seek, but do not wake. The dreams of gods are not for mortals to interrupt, for in those dreams, we ourselves exist.

XVIII. And know this final truth: the gods dream of an ending. Not destruction, but completion - a time when the scattered light returns to its source and the great cycle begins anew. Whether this is prophecy or merely divine wondering, none can say.