The Kindred
The everyday pantheon of Tir Hathar — a divine family of gods tied to ordinary life, worshipped in every village and every trade. Born in the Myrean Confederacy. For how it sits alongside the Azure Flame, the Unbroken Chain, and the Lion, see Religion.
A note on names: the Kindred's gods mostly carry Greek names. The names give a first sense of who each god is, but they aren't direct translations of the Greek pantheon. Ares here is the Tekna of War, not the Ares of Greek myth, and the stories don't carry over.
The Names¶
The Kindred is a Myrean faith, and its vocabulary is Greek rather than the Scholar Nation's Arabic or Persian.
| Name | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Theoikia | "the house of the gods" | theh-oh-EE-kee-ah |
| The Kindred | the common name | — |
| Mētēr Theōn | "Mother of the Gods" | MAY-tair theh-OHN |
| Theiane | the Mother's name | theh-YAH-neh |
| Tekna | "the Children" — the twelve greater gods | TEK-nah |
| Hypotheoi | "the under-gods" — the lesser gods | hee-po-THEH-oy |
Theoikia is the formal name, used in liturgy and temple inscriptions. Almost nobody says it in daily life. Everyone says the Kindred.
The Family¶
The Kindred is, first and last, a family — and that's the part of the faith everyone knows.
Theiane, Mother of the Gods¶
The head of the family. Theiane keeps the sun, the moon, the stars, and the dawn, and she keeps the hearth, the family, and fire. She is the Mētēr Theōn, the mother of the twelve Tekna, and the one to whom the whole household answers.
The Tekna — the Twelve Children¶
Theiane's children. Their domains are broad, each covering a whole sweep of the world:
| Name | Domain | Pronunciation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Demeter | Fertility: birth, growth, and living things | dih-MEE-ter |
| 2 | Athena | Knowledge: what is known | ah-THEE-nah |
| 3 | Poseidon | the Elements: the sea, the sky, and stone, with the waters, the winds, and the storms | poh-SY-dun |
| 4 | Hecate | spells, the arts of magic, and magicians | HEK-ah-tee |
| 5 | Apollo | prophecy, rituals, and magical energy | ah-POL-oh |
| 6 | Ares | War, and the one Child who walks the world (see Religion → The Two Walking Gods) | AIR-eez |
| 7 | Hades | Death and the hunt | HAY-deez |
| 8 | Hephaestus | the Forge: craft and making | heh-FES-tus |
| 9 | Hermes | Roads and Travel | HUR-meez |
| 10 | Themis | Law and Oaths: the law's justice, not the Lion's | THEE-mis |
| 11 | Tyche | Fortune, Trade, and Wealth | TY-kee |
| 12 | Aphrodite | love, beauty, passion, wine, revelry, music, and art | af-roh-DY-tee |
Fire is Theiane's own. Poseidon's elements touch it now and then, but the flame belongs to the Mother, which is why it burns at the heart of every Kindred temple.
Hades holds the hunt as well as death. Hunters pray to him for a clean kill and a full larder, and the faithful say it gives the god of death a lighter side. Others say it gives the hunt a darker one. Most would admit it's a little of both.
The Children and the Moons¶
Theiane keeps the moons, but Myreans say each of the three is lent to one of her children:
- Zarshki, the Crimson Moon, to Apollo
- Sarab, the Mirage Moon, to Hecate
- Calenamendil, the Primal Moon, to Poseidon
The Mother still holds the moons themselves, so those three Children lean on her more than their siblings do.
The Hypotheoi — the Under-Gods¶
Beneath the Tekna sit the Hypotheoi: lesser gods with very specific domains. A god of lighthouses. A god of one particular river. A patron of debts repaid, of a single city's harbor, of those lost at sea, of midwives, of bridges.
There is no fixed number of them. A few dozen are known almost everywhere; many more are local, known only in one valley or one trade. Each serves in the household of one of the Tekna — a lighthouse god in Poseidon's, a midwives' god in Demeter's — and that's the breadth that gives the Kindred a patron for almost any domain.
Worship¶
Most common people worship one or two patron deities casually, without deep theological engagement — the god of their trade, the god of their town, the god they were raised to thank. A sailor keeps Poseidon and the harbor's own Hypotheos; a smith keeps Hephaestus.
Kindred temples keep a hearth-fire burning — ordinary gold flame, the same fire as any kitchen's. The gods of the Kindred live in the same house as everyone else.
Clerics: Domain-locked by specific patron deity. A cleric of Hephaestus gets crafting and the forge-fire; they cannot casually heal allies. The breadth of the Kindred means there's a patron for almost any domain, but individual clerics are narrow specialists.
Structure¶
No central hierarchy. The Kindred has no pope, no council of bishops, no unified doctrine. This is simultaneously its greatest strength (it's everywhere, in every village, in every trade) and its greatest weakness (it cannot organize, cannot field an army, cannot respond to threats as a unified body). The gods have a hierarchy. Their priests don't.
The Theological Wound¶
Gods of the Kindred died in the Long War — all of them Hypotheoi. None of the Tekna fell, and Theiane endures.
Two deaths are treated as settled fact:
- The god of Healing and Medicine, who served in Demeter's household.
- The god of Teachers and Sages, who served in Athena's household.
When a Hypotheos dies, its domain doesn't vanish. It falls back to the Child it served — who now holds work they were never shaped for. Healing and medicine still exist, but they rest with Demeter, who doesn't know them well. Healing is less common than it was, and medicine as an art has stagnated, possibly slipped backward. Teaching still happens, but it rests with Athena, who governs what is known rather than how it is passed on. Teachers rely on old, outdated methods, and divination answers slowly.
Other Hypotheoi almost certainly died too. The Kindred's decentralized nature meant there was no unified response — individual temples mourned individual gods, and their domains were quietly absorbed by the Child above them. Demeter now also answers prayers that used to go to a harvest god who no longer exists. Whether those prayers are answered as well is a matter of local clergy opinion.
What Some Priests Know¶
Some priests — not many, and rarely in public — hold that certain of the Hypotheoi were not born gods at all, but mortals raised into the family. It isn't preached. It isn't proven. Most of the faithful have never heard it, and the Kindred has no hierarchy that could rule on it either way. If anyone ever did prove it, the consequences would reach well beyond the Kindred.
Geographic Presence¶
The Kindred was born in the Myrean Confederacy and is strongest there, where the lack of central political authority means no single church has dominated. It has spread everywhere since. In Dar Ilm al-Zakir, its shrines count among the "foreign gods" serving traders and immigrant quarters.
Relationship to Other Faiths¶
The Kindred doesn't organize against anyone — it's too decentralized to do so. Individual priests may have strong opinions; the Kindred as an institution has none.
- The Azure Flame: tolerates the Kindred as folk religion, while quietly believing its gods are lesser powers or misunderstood aspects of the Azure Flame.
- The Unbroken Chain: the Kindred ignores it as beneath engagement. Both faiths would say divinity runs in families; the Kindred means the gods' family, passed down from Theiane, not a spark waiting in a mortal's blood.
- The Lion: no formal position, because there's no institution to take one against.