The world is shrouded in darkness, but with the light of knowledge you can reveal the wonders it has to offer.
Oruunos is the god of lore and discovery, of magic and prophecy, of education and secrets. They are the patron of teachers and librarians, of spies and scholars, of inventors and scientists, of seers and mages. They are the hunger to understand, the insatiable curiosity that drives you to dig deeper, the spark of insight that makes sense of a jumble of information, the light shining against the darkness of ignorance.
The Wizened God believes that knowledge is vital to elevating the mortal experience, in both practical and metaphorical ways. Knowledge gives mortals the tools they need to improve their lives through physical means, while study and philosophy can deepen their understanding of the world around them, enriching their experience of life even if it doesn’t materially improve things. Oruunos teaches that the pursuit and sharing of knowledge is a holy and vital task for any mortal to undertake, but cautions their followers not to allow the drive for knowledge to endanger the wellbeing of themselves or others; down that road lie the horrors of Zunakhar’s mad vivisectionists and tinkerers.
Tholmar, the Keeper, patron Saint of Preservation and History, who watches over the world’s libraries, museums and archives.
Asmarta, the Seer, patron Saint of Divination and Thaumaturgy, whose whispered insights bring clarity to the minds of seers, diviners, and mages of all sorts.
Madina, the Tinker, patron Saint of Invention and Science, the guide of those who seek to understand and push the boundary of mortal knowledge and mastery.
Zur, the Shadowed, patron Saint of Secrets and Darkness, who watches over the spies of the world and collects secrets like a dragon hoards gold.
Taerek, the Patient, patron Saint of Scholars and Teachers, who gives the gift of memory and eloquence to any who would seek to learn about the world or share their knowledge with others.
The virtues of the Oruunari faith are these: to have patience in your search for knowledge, for it is a life-long journey; to show courage and do not let fear deter you as you travel along that long and winding path; and to always seek out the truth, no matter how easy or tempting it might be to accept a lie or partial truth when you come across it.
To learn, you must be patient. Countless hours must be spent reading, listening, discussing, and experimenting in order to move your understanding of the world forward, and not all of them will be pleasant or exciting. The path to understanding is not always easy or filled with joy — it can be long, difficult, and frustrating at times, but the rewards at the end are worth it if you but have the patience to keep walking it and pursuing enlightenment.
The true pursuit of knowledge is not for the faint of heart. You must be ready to fail as you try to master a subject, to make a fool of yourself in front of others, to realize that you don’t know as much as you thought you did, to ask for help from those who know more than you do. You must have the courage to let go of what you think is true so that you might understand a new perspective or grasp a truth that changes your understanding of the world. These things are not easy; they require courage, of a very different sort from that of a warrior or hunter, but it is just this kind of small, everyday courage that is critical to those who seek to follow the path of enlightenment.
Always seek the truth. Comfortable lies or easy partial-truths may tempt you, but you must resist their call — even if you cannot comprehend all of the truth, you must never be satisfied with straightforward answers or simple solutions. Oruunos does not dictate that their followers must always tell the truth, though a number of their Saints frown upon the telling of falsehoods; rather, Oruunos directs that their followers must pursue the truth. Always question what you are told and what you learn, picking it apart detail by detail, attempting to discern what is true from what you merely believe or assume.
The sins of the Oruunari faith are thus: to intentionally choose to live in ignorance and turn your face away from the path of learning; to destroy knowledge in any way and thus preventing others from learning from it, no matter how dangerous or mistaken it might be; and to cast aside ethics and consideration for others in your pursuit of knowledge, following the horrific path of damnation laid down by Zunakhar.
Closing your eyes to the world, refusing to learn more, is anathema. Active curiosity is not a requirement for those of the Oruunari faith, as they see value in those who are willing to learn and aid others in learning but are not driven to search out new knowledge. However, the refusal to learn something when you have the opportunity is a grave sin in their eyes, something that goes against the very core of Oruunos’ faith. Always be willing to learn something new, no matter how uncomfortable it might make you or how it might upset what you already know.
Destroying knowledge, no matter the reason, is never acceptable. Conceal it or contain it, if you must, but never destroy it. To destroy a source of knowledge, even false or possibly-dangerous knowledge, is to bar others from learning from the mistakes made by those who created it. The Oruunari faith has developed many ways of safely handling dangerous lore, and is not shy about pointing out the flaws and mistakes that exist in so many tomes and scrolls; what it never does, though, is destroy anything that might be useful to the spread of knowledge in the future, no matter how flawed, abominable, or dangerous that lore might be.
Knowledge is a tool, in the same way that a pen, a scalpel, and a sword are all tools, and it can be just as deadly if misused. Oruunos holds that their followers must always seek to understand the impacts that their actions might have, whether in pursuit of knowledge or in the use of it. Take the time to think through how what you are doing will impact those around you. The ends do not justify the means, in Oruunos’ eyes, and they have had to deal quite harshly in the past with followers who pushed the boundary of ethics too far in search of a new discovery or invention. Never harm others in your pursuit of enlightenment, or allow knowledge that might cause harm to spread uncontrolled.
Oruunos appears in artwork and on the rare occasions they manifest before mortals as an elderly mortal, either male, female, or androgynous, but always with dull grey hair, copper skin, and a face heavily-lined by age. Their eyes are solid orbs that mirror the skies above at the time, whether sky blue with puffy clouds floating through them, the pinks and oranges of a sunset, or black voids studded by stars of the night sky. Their features are plain and never beautiful, and they often appear with a rather short and plump physique.
Oruunos’ Lineage when they appear before mortals varies widely, but in religious art they are usually depicted as being a Snow Elf. They seem to prefer simple robes dyed a deep black or navy blue over anything fancy or ostentatious. There is always a delighted twinkle in their eye and an energy in their voice that together give them the spirit of a teacher who truly loves their subject, drawing their students into the lesson through sheer enthusiasm and force of personality.
Oruunos is, at their heart, a nerd: someone who loves learning about things, figuring out how things work, and enthusiastically talking about what they’ve been learning with anyone who’s interested in hearing it. Unfortunately, they’re also a God, which means that they have a deeper insight into the universe than any mortal mind would be able to comprehend, and cannot communicate clearly with mortals any of their insights. Their Saints are able to commune at a deeper level with Oruunos, but even then there is a qualitative difference in how well and completely any communication about Oruunos’ discoveries can take place.
So, while they still take joy in exploring the secrets of the universe and forming intricate n-dimensional constructs in out-of-the-way corners of space-time, most of Oruunos’ energies are devoted to living vicariously through their mortal followers and aiding them in their search for knowledge. By watching over them, silently cheering them through their studies and trials, and giving gentle nudges of inspiration or memory, Oruunos seeks to both satisfy their own thirst for learning and slowly help mortalkind build a better world through the knowledge they gain with their own effort and wit.
Oruunos has no grand end-goal in mind for their efforts. Perhaps in an ideal world mortals would all become sufficiently advanced that they would be able to appreciate the mysteries of the cosmos alongside the Wizened God, but they fully understand that such a thing is a highly unlikely and very distant possibility. Instead, their focus is on helping mortals to build what they call the Tower of Knowledge one layer, secret, epiphany, or experiment at a time. They believe that a better understanding of the world and its secrets can make the world a better place, and try to guide their followers towards that end. Ultimately, though, what they truly care about is that their followers learn, that they help one another and future generations learn, so that that metaphorical Tower might one day eventually reach the very Heavens themselves.
The vast majority of prayers to Oruunos are made in silence. Only when multiple people come together to pray to the Wizened God do they speak their prayers aloud, and even then the custom is to keep the volume to the lowest possible while still allowing all in attendance to hear. Public worship of Oruunos frequently mimics story-telling or professorial cadences in its delivery, resembling a lesson or recitation of a saga more than a sermon.
The most frequent form of prayer is known as the Prayer of Contemplation. It involves placing two fingers before your lips (as if you were shushing someone), closing your eyes, and reciting your prayer in your mind as clearly as possible. Initiates in the Oruunari faith are trained to perform this prayer as a form of meditation, but any who wish to quickly ask the Wizened Gods’ assistance in a matter may use it to send a prayer their way.
A more involved manner of prayer is the Prayer of the Lamp. Write your prayer upon a scrap of paper or parchment and set it alight with as much ceremony as you can. Then place it in a bowl, lamp, or other fireproof container and watch it burn to ash while performing the Prayer of Contemplation. This is the preferred method of sending a prayer to Oruunos, as the act of destruction lightly pricks at the metaphysical senses of Oruunos and their Saints and Heralds, drawing their attention and bringing their focus upon the prayer more reliably than the Prayer of Contemplation on its own.
One other prayer that is common amongst the Oruunari faithful is the Prayer of Direction, used when someone is at a loss for what to do or wants a hint as to how to proceed in some manner relating to Oruunos’ domains. It takes myriad forms, but all of them are based on luck or chance and asking Oruunos to place a feather upon the scales of Fate to offer their guidance. Run your finger along a shelf of books, waiting for it to catch upon one of them to see what may hold an answer to your dilemma. Set icons or excerpts of the concepts you are wrestling with around a spinning top, and wait for it to point towards what you should investigate next. In moments of reflection let Fate guide you, for Oruunos has long since learned the means of guiding that ephemeral force in subtle ways to answer a prayer.
Above all, Oruunos has one directive when their followers are praying to them or their servants: they may ask for assistance in learning, but they must never ask to be handed knowledge freely without spending the effort or paying a cost to learn it. They believe that the Tower of Knowledge must be built by mortal hands and not by the Gods, or else mortals will see it as a divine creation and not something of their own making.
The night of the first full moon after the Autumn Equinox is holy to Oruunos. The full moon is associated with revelation and wonder, and on that night the followers of Oruunos celebrate all they have learned and the joy they have taken in pursuit of knowledge over the past year. In contrast, the night of the first new moon after the Spring Equinox is considered holy for its association with secrets and the mysteries of the unknown, and is seen as a time to meditate on mistakes made over the past year and seek guidance from Oruunos for the year ahead. When an Equinox is forecast to exactly coincide with the appropriate lunar phase, followers of Oruunos declare it to be a high holy day; they fast for seven days in preparation, consuming only water and bland food, and when the night arrives it turns into a grand feast as well as a celebration of the Wizened God’s creed.
The clergy of Oruunos are charged with spreading the light of knowledge to those around them. When dealing with members of their community, mystics of Oruunos are expected to do what they can to teach, guide, and shepherd those around them towards a better understanding of the world.
For many, this takes the form of literally teaching those who seek their instruction, on whatever topic that mystic might be an expert on. For others, this takes the form of assisting seekers of knowledge in their quest, offering guidance on where answers might be found and who might know the secrets they seek. Some, particularly followers of Tholmar, prefer to devote themselves to preserving knowledge and staffing the libraries, vaults, and other repositories of lore throughout the Continent, offering their services in finding whatever information a seeker might be looking for within the tomes they safeguard. Those with a particularly investigative bent become Inquisitors or spies, prying into the affairs of others to uncover corruption or abuse of knowledge and keep the leadership of the faith informed of events throughout the world.
Oruunos has also encouraged the development of a number of militant factions within their faith, which train mystics in the ways of war and battle so that they might better defend themselves and whatever they seek to protect. Not all Oruunari clergy are trained in the ways of the battle-mage, but it’s never safe to assume that a place staffed by priests of Oruunos is completely defenseless.
Oruunari ceremonies, unsurprisingly, tend to be as much about teaching and encouraging the participants to learn new things as they are religious events. A simple example would be n Oruunari priest sharing what knowledge they have on a subject, asking pointed questions of the audience to get them to start thinking about it, and then wrapping it up with a prayer to Oruunos that relates to whatever the lesson of the day was. Ceremonies can get much more complicated and long-winded than that, though, especially within the halls of the larger Oruunari temples or libraries; the clergy of Oruunos are well-known as being prone to going on tangents during their sermons.
The single over-arching goal of the Oruunari faith is to build what they call the Tower of Knowledge. What that means in practice is to seek out new knowledge, encourage others outside the faith to seek out knowledge, and to do whatever is necessary to improve upon and preserve any knowledge that has already been gained by mortal-kind. Those who are working to expand the knowledge-base of the mortal world stand upon the works of those who came before them, building the Tower one metaphorical stone at a time. Preserving lore and teaching it to the next generation are just as important in the Oruunari worldview as discovering new secrets, for if knowledge from the past is lost then so too those stones disappear from within the Tower, until its foundations are eroded completely and the whole metaphorical edifice crumbles upon itself.
The obsession that the Oruunari have with standing upon the shoulders of those who came before, of doing everything they can to ensure that lore uncovered by scholars and sages of the past is never lost, is credited by most historians with keeping the Continent from descending into a true Dark Age. Though the cultist invasions of Churnings have in the past almost pushed the people of the Continent to the brink of defeat, the lore kept in the Oruunari Vaults has ensured that once victory was achieved the knowledge of how to recover and work towards a brighter future was always preserved.
In recent centuries, as the academic institutions of the Continent have grown progressively larger and more stratified, the devoted faithful of Oruunos have developed their own badges of office to match those in use at the various Collegia, Schola, and Universities. These have, over time, turned into ornate but functional objects: a quill for initiates who have taken the first step towards becoming a mystic, a scroll for fully-fledged mystics, and a tome bearing Oruunos’ Eye on its cover for senior members of the clergy.
These badges of office are often displayed on someone’s person, though the exact form that this takes depends heavily on how large the object is and how active the person expects to be while wearing it. New initiates have a great deal of leeway in how they wear or carry their Initiate’s Quill, with some keeping it safe within a writing kit and others finding a way to attach it to a brooch or pin. Many mystics of Oruunos wear their Seeker’s Scroll in a holster on their belt as a symbol of their rank in the faith, with more ornate scroll knobs indicating higher rank. Senior mystics who have earned their Scholar’s Tome often leave it at their home or workplace, especially if the one they’ve been gifted is particularly large; those who prefer to carry theirs on their person often do so in some kind of large holster or harness designed specifically for books.
It’s tradition amongst the faith for a more-senior mystic to gift a badge of office to the new Initiate, Seeker, or Scholar, either handing their own down to a protege or commissioning one specifically for the purpose. These are presented to the recipient in formal ceremonies, which all nearby members of the faith are encouraged to attend in order to congratulate a fellow seeker of knowledge upon their accomplishments.
One of the core tenets of Oruunos’ faith is that no knowledge is without value. Even false, misleading, or dangerous lore can be used for good, if in the right hands or used in the right ways. However, this does not change the fact that some knowledge should not be easily accessible by all and sundry, and so the faith has developed the tradition of Sanctioning knowledge, limiting access to it somehow or placing it under some form of mundane or magical control.
The recipe for gunpowder is a classic example — the substance is dangerously unstable when exposed to ambient aether and frighteningly easy for even a neophyte alchemist to mix together. The Oruunari have ensured that any books or scrolls mentioning it are locked away in restricted vaults, that any alchemists who learn or are taught the recipe are instructed very clearly in how dangerous the substance is and the history of failed attempts to control or manipulate it, and that anyone who intentionally spreads the knowledge is hunted down and either imprisoned or executed for attempting to cause chaos and destruction.
Similar efforts are taken to ensure that the dark magics of the Far Realms and Old Gods are kept under lock and key so that they cannot tempt foolish mages eager for a quick boost of power. Such lore is never destroyed, no matter how tempting it might be, for any piece of it might hold the key to cleansing a curse by one of those foul entities or exploiting the weakness in an Old God’s servant. Even so, the cost of the powers contained in such tomes is never cheap, and allowing anyone access would ensure that someone would eventually use them and bring disaster upon themselves or those around them; better to lock such lore away and only grant access to those who can be trusted to handle the knowledge within responsibly.
Of course, no method of containment is perfect, and not everyone who is granted access to Sanctioned Lore is worthy of that trust. The Oruunari faith employs many Inquisitors whose sole charge is to investigate possible breaches of the Sanctioned Lore, with the full weight of the faithful behind them should they find evidence of a breach. Inquisitors are not a common sight amongst the folk of the Continent, fortunately, but the times when do appear to conduct an investigation are often ones of chaos and ruin, as knowledge that should have remained locked away is put to bloody and destructive use. Many of the tales told amongst the common folk of the Oruunari Inquisitors are along the lines of “if you hear that one is in town: run, before whatever they’re hunting down explodes.”
Oruunos ascended filled with revulsion towards the horrors that Zunakhar perpetrated in the name of “knowledge.” As Oruunos built their faith, they did so with purpose, ensuring that their followers’ pursuit of knowledge would never result in them going down those dark paths themselves.
The faithful of Oruunos are required to follow a number of ethical tenets when they are experimenting or doing research on a subject, covering everything from truthful presentation of their results to disclosing any conflicts of interest they might have. The biggest and most important one, however, the rule that will result in excommunication and imprisonment (or worse) if someone violates it, is consent. If they are experimenting on a sentient being who isn’t one of the Old Gods’ demonic servants, they must gain the consent of the subject before using them in their research.
This tenet has been broken many times over the millennia since the Godswar. The faithful of Oruunos have always spoken out against such violations, but sometimes the results of forbidden research can be too tempting for those in power to resist. The most well-known case of this is the runic cleansing experiments performed in Sunderwyl after the Chainbreaker Churning in the Second Millennium, but every nation has its share of horror stories to add to the pile. In each of them, though, the ending usually involves the followers of Oruunos coming in with fire, steel, and spell to bring the perpetrators to face the Wizened God’s justice.
Many of the greatest stories centering on the Oruunari faith concern the quest for grand secrets of the universe — concepts and formulae that reach deep into the way magic and the natural world function, that give mortals power over the world around them. In addition to this understandable fascination with the deepest secrets of Creation, however, the Oruunari faith is equally focused on collecting lore about and understanding the people of the world. Treatises on history, politics, music, and more are viewed by the faith as being just as fundamental to understanding the world and building the Tower of Knowledge as experiments upon the deep forces of reality. Other people are just as much of a part of the mortal experience as magic and science, in the Oruunari perspective, and so works that catalogue and explore the knowledge of the mortal world are held in great esteem by the faith.
Oruunos was one of the chief archivists within the mammoth Eldritch Library at the heart of Zuno’olos during the days leading up to the Godswar, toiling away to ensure that Zunakhar’s records of abominable experiments were filed correctly for later review. When the Godswar broke out and Zunakhar was wounded by the other Old Gods, Oruunos used the fel knowledge they had gained within the Library to steal Zunakhar’s godhead for themselves. They took on the title of God of Enlightenment, and vowed to never again let the pursuit of knowledge take precedence over the lives and rights of mortals.
The Celestial Archive is Oruunos’ realm within the Veil, an endless library where stories, lore, and secrets are recorded for eternity, and the spirits of Oruunos’ followers can forever peruse the knowledge of the ages and entertain one another with tales of the past and future.