MANTLES AND MESSES

There’s a fine line between being a forgotten god and being THE forgotten, and on that line stood the union, with their divinity strike fund. It was possible for your worshippers, given time to forget your name and, for a time, remain functional on saved up divinity. But that was hard to do, and with one little slip-up, they forgot all of you. For a god, that was a problem, and a dangerous one at that. That way, they lay grudges and curses, and once a god takes a grudge, they hold onto it like a junkyard dog with their favourite toy. They even tended to take it out on the next owner of their title, which if you’ve ever read a fairy story in your life, you will know is extremely bad news. From there, things only get worse as the grudge hollows them out until, eventually, it is all that is left.

This isn’t like a dark god, dark gods govern a dark aspect, and there’s nothing wrong with that; the forgotten, on the other hand, well, they let a dark aspect govern them.

&&&&&& was a no named god, but not forgotten, and he had taken over the honourable duty of managing that oh so fine line. He was sat in his office (a perfectly ordinary office if you ignore that every cubicle was a pocket dimension and divine domain, and yet somehow some git ALWAYS managed to nick some bugger else’s stapler) when the file landed on his desk (quite a fine desk it was too, made from expertly polished and hex cleaned, temporally displaced oak, the wood you get nowadays just wasn’t as good in his opinion.) He carefully picked up the file, reading it through, then looking before slamming his head into the desk (see, modern oak couldn’t have stood up to that, but this desk? He ended up doing this twice a week, and all that had changed was a few minor dents in the wood. Somebody had once suggested if he had so much trouble, maybe he should stop his percussive stress relief. But this only showed &&&&&& that they had never ever tried dealing with his job. besides the fifteen self-repair charms that had been cast on, it took care of most of the damage.) He took the file carefully and looked it over once more, wincing at the fact it hadn’t improved, then walked over to the file boxes, ignoring the in and out boxes and expertly filing it in the “migraine waiting to happen” box. This was a big job, and it was going to mean so much paperwork.

************************************************************************

Meanwhile, Archangel Adrian was still trying to figure out his newfound employer’s ideal mantle. (Cassie was busy elsewhere, her plans to capture that damned fly grew more and more elaborate by the day but never seemed to improve on the success rate.) For some reason, the God of Rhubarb didn’t really have a good ring to it, nor did the god of biscuits seem like it would be a good fit, no matter how many of them his worshippers may present as offerings. (Besides, the goddesses of the hearth tended to consider that particular mantle their turf, and they had a temper, access to Bodgejob God of smithing crafted rolling pins, and knowledge of how to use them in ways that would make even the most strong-willed, and sturdy immortal pray for the sweet release of death) god of irrigation sounded like it would be a source of constant irritation and god of canals? Well, imagine trying to keep all those waterways on the straight and narrow. That sounded like a lot of work for not very much divinity. Especially since it would mean potentially dealing with Precishun God of Urban planning, and that guy could make the joint world paint drying and grass growing competition sharing a venue with the philately and pocket protector collectors convention seem exciting in comparison. As you can imagine, when ADRIAN considers you boring, that is practically a professional opinion. So the search continued. He briefly considered the god of bathing, then remembered that bathing was still considered a novel and luxurious concept just now, and many of the local farmers still considered it optional despite their Saintesses best efforts that was extremely likely to remain the case for a few years yet.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

That and Adrian was fairly sure given the nobility and their *ahem* unique pastimes that Avaskinful God of parties, booze, and most specifically drunken mistakes (the phrase “oh god why the hell did I do that and where the hell did I get a luminous orange cone to wear as a hat?” Is praise unto Avaskinful. The follow-up phrase “Oh god my head”, on the other hand, belongs exclusively to Hairodadog, God of hangovers, who gains a lot of passive prayers, and the “Oh God what the hell?” that follows; belongs to Clenuponailfive God of unwelcome messes.) Adrian, for obvious reasons, was not especially keen to deal with that particular Triumvirate, as they would get on with him like a house on fire (in face exactly like a house on fire as screams, flames, and people fleeing in terror from the wreckage would be a forgone conclusion.) So the quest continued, but as you can imagine finding a vacancy in a human-shaped world for a deity of the herpetological persuasion is not as easy as it sounds. Especially when the Gods have a nasty habit of bogarting multiple mantles (except, of course, Pufpufpas, who had several commandments against bogarting of any kind and did not mind in the least smiting a few to make sure that message came through loud and clear.) But when you consider that there is only so much worship to go around, and a forgotten god with no divinity saved up would very quickly be a dead god, it really wasn’t so surprising that multiple jobs were the norm. (When was the last time you heard of a Goddess of the harvest who was not also a Goddess of fertility and often, more surprisingly, war? Or, for that matter, god of the sky and war. God of rivers, and war, all told war was a popular mantle.) Still, Adrian was never one to give up; he’d check the vacancies daily, something had to come up eventually, right?