Endless Blue – Week 93 – Eadro, the Changing Tide

Theology

Eadro, the Changing Tide

The seasons change, and life under Elqua’s water migrates, abandoning its current seabed for the fresher environment over “there”.  No matter where you are, the seaweed is always greener in the next kelp-bed, the waters clearer around the other coral reef, the fish tastier from another school.  The vibrancy of what you have pales in comparison to what others have.

He is the God of life along the Shore, the Bather of Gills, where flora and fauna intermix.  There, their lives overlap and intertwine, utilizing the virtues each other has to better themselves.  The faithful of Eadro, His Ardent, know this and take it to heart.  The shark is a great hunter.  So Eadro’s Ardent use their teeth for unguis and skin for shagreen.  The octopus is a wily obscurantist.  Thus Eadro’s Ardent harvest their ink occlude the waters and their skin for clothing.  Coral is robust and strong, hence Eadro’s Ardent employ it for hardiness and resilience.

Dissatisfaction with what is when what could be is so much better.  Do not be satisfied with what you have, when it could be better.  By wanting more, you expand your potential,  protect against those with the very qualities you covet.  Those qualities make them superior, put you at a disadvantage.  Take those qualities and make them your own, and you protect yourself from those that will soon use that quality against you.  You are inferior without the qualities that others possess, and others know that.

Eadro, the Deliverer, Lord of the Sunlit Shore, Bather of Gills, the Changing Tide, Invidia of the Envy.

Alignment: Neutral.
Symbol: A spiral of green seaweed, swirling with fish, circling outward at a greater and greater arc.
Domains: Animal, Luck, Magic, Travel, War.
Preferred Unguis (weapon): Spear.
Clerical Unguis of Choice: Spear.
Cleric Alignment: Chaotic neutral, lawful neutral, neutral evil, neutral good, true neutral.

Divine Visage

Eadro has a transient, almost immaterial visage.  He is a gestalt being, a collection of other fauna that collected together forms His shape.  He will appear as a school of various fish, swarming in a spiral, each individual in perfect concert with the others.  In a flash, the whole can change direction, dart away to avoid harm, or ram forward to strike a foe.

The Church of Eadro

Eadro’s clergy are shamans, primarily concerned with the needs of their current.  They are seldom concerned with greater events, seeing only the more pertinent problems facing them.    As the Changing Tide, Eadro’s will is carried out by his Ardent shamans.  The shamans advise the current when it is time to move on to clearer waters, what species of fish to consume, which direction to migrate.

Ardent come to their shaman for aid in their everyday activities.  They seek blessings for births, charms for unrequited love, curses on adversaries, and myriad other inconsequential acts.  It is up to the shaman how far to fulfill these petitions, but most often will send the individual off with a magic charm of some sort.

Shrines and Ceremonies

Eadro’s Ardent are taught to respect the sacrifice of those that died to ensure your survival, for they possessed what you need to survive.  They have what you lack, and your deficit made you inferior to them.  By assuming their trait, their forfeit makes you better.  That gift must be acknowledged.  Remembrance of the lives that passed and the gifts that passing gave to the Ardent are honored through short prayer.

The Deliverer’s Tenets teach the acknowledgement of Jealousy and Envy as indication of your flaws; flaws that should be remedied by taking the characteristics of others and making them yours.  Position, privilege, property, or prosperity, all are markers of yourself.  Jealously protect them in yourself, enviously desire them in others.

Allied Organizations

The Godless find the self-improvement mentality of Eadro’s Ardent inviting, and bring their attempts at education to areas of the Hinterseas where civilization is believed to be lacking.  These missionaries try to teach the local math and abstraction, but come into conflict with the strength of the Ardent’s belief in their god.

Opposed Organizations

Kelpygmies — Eadro despises the Kelpygmy currents.  They are seen as non-pisceans, animate plants that have no character, no personality, no vitae.  There is no desirable trait in them, and they seek nothing but the destruction of the Ardent.

Relations with other Religions

Eadro’s Ardent are generally viewed by other religions as a harmless fringe element.  Eadro’s Ardents accomplish this by way of an constant complimentary tone that borders on an almost sycophantic degree.  His followers see the traits in other religious organizations that they desire, and keep those envied systems complacent through friendliness and flattery.

Schisms

Invidia of the Envy — As Invidia, this deity acts as a catalyst, a force for change.  Forever wanting better, always desiring what you don’t already have, Invidia represents the continued need to improve the self and overcome whatever shortcomings are hampering life.

The New Tradition — Those faithful that do not see the god’s symbol as a growing expansion outward, but as a spiraling descent downward.  They think Eadro’s lack of action in greater events is dooming His faithful to a secondary class.  In order to survive in a modern world, they feel they must adopt the ways of the other races.  They see emulation as the inevitable end of Eadro’s tenets, practiced on a global level.  Ardents charge that this New Traditonalists belief can only lead to the loss of Eadro’s ways, that modernization is the death of the old traditions.

Protean Monks — Individualistic and reclusive, the Protean Monks take the dogma of Eadro and internalize it.  By personifying envy and jealousy, the monks gain an ability to mimic the form of others.  Likened to a willful form of lycanthropy, this mimicking effect “translates” the monk into an envied species — i.e., what the monk would be like if they actually were born that species.  The vitae of the monk stays the same, but with the form of, for example, an Orcan instead of his native Locanth.  A Protean can achieve multiple different racial forms, but each “disguise” has the same distinct features that make his natural piscean form recognizable.  It is as if the monk was the same piscean, only born to that different race.

“Jealousy protects you when you are prosperous;
Envy propels you when you are powerless.“
— “The Dichotomy of Invidia”, from the Idolatry.