Tiriana and Sera entered the shrine to find it mostly empty, save for a series of small statues upon an altar along the back wall and a woman in a chair in the corner. The woman was slumped over, eyes wide open but seeing nothing, and her mouth hanging open and groaning. She was olive-skinned and raven haired, and rather than robes or a habit, she was garbed in leather trousers, boots, and a comfortable looking green shirt.

“Uh…is she okay?” Sera asked, immediately concerned for the woman’s welfare. Tiriana didn’t look worried, though, which calmed her somewhat.

“Yep, that’s just Vivi on an average day,” she said, bemused. The elf walked up and snapped her fingers in Vivi’s face a few times, and suddenly her eyes came into focus, followed shortly by her jumping to her feet. The first words out of her mouth were unintelligible, but Tiriana apparently understood, as she replied. “No, we’re not here for introductions, she needs your help.”

Vivi didn’t reply, instead closing her eyes and clasping her hands in prayer. The cleric spoke aloud in words Sera didn’t understand, and a faint white glow started in her hands and spread to the rest of her body. When she finished, the glow vanished, and she met Sera’s eyes.

“Welcome to my humble shrine. I am Cleric Vivi, follower of Adventure. What can I do to assist you?”

Sera glanced at Tiriana before replying. “It’s fine to tell her?” she asked, to which Tiriana nodded.

“Go ahead. I’ll patrol for a bit; this should be between you and her.” The elf matched her words and left the shrine with that, closing the door behind her and leaving Sera with the cleric she’d known for less than five minutes. That left Sera a bit uncomfortable, but she supposed it was like having a friend accompany you to a doctor’s visit.

“Uh, so, in short, I’m trans, and I don’t have access to the medications I was taking to hormonally transition back on Earth. Tiriana thought you might have a way to help?” she asked, a bit hesitant.

“I see. It is most unfortunate for you to have arrived here, but I believe I should be able to provide a temporary solution.” Viva approached and laid her hands on Sera shoulders, then closed her eyes, which Sera judged to mean she was about to pray again. “Pehtayuson, Patron of Adventure, grant me the power to aid this wayward child in the absence of one more worthy. Transmute Blood.”

As she spoke, her hands again began to glow white, but this time, the glow transferred to Sera’s body instead. When it faded, though, she found that she felt no different than before, despite her momentary worry that her blood had just been turned into wine or something. Viva took her hands from Sera’s shoulders and stepped back, leaving a bit of personal space between the two.

“Sadly, as a Cleric of Adventure, my miracles are more suited for survival and exploration, but one of the applications of the universal miracle I performed is to convert a targeted substance in the body into another. Typically it is used to treat blood imbalances such as heightened sugar levels, but in this instance, I have channeled the divine power of my patron to convert male hormones to female hormones for as long as the miracle lasts.

“A Cleric of Healthcare or of Gender may have been able to apply the same affect for several months. As it is outside of my domain, however, this miracle will last you only a week, at which point it will need to be reapplied. I suggest you return in eight days for another session,” Viva explained at length, giving Sera no time to respond until she finished the entire explanation. Speaking as someone from a world without magic it was difficult to just trust someone claiming they had laid hands on her and cured her, which would have been solely performed by fraudulent televangelists and the like on Earth, but she supposed if it were a lie, the effects would be evident soon enough.

Besides- that type of con-artist didn’t usually have glowing hands.

“That was…faster than I expected. Should I go find Tiriana?” she asked, unsure what to do with herself now. Viva smiled faintly and returned to her seat, gesturing to another a couple feet away.

“I suspect Tiriana meant to give us time to speak. I’m sure you have many questions she was unable to fully answer, and knew that I was, well…rather bored. Sit, and we’ll talk for a bit.” Sera went ahead and followed Vivi’s direction, sitting in the blocky wooden chair she was offered. Despite looking like it was crafted on-site and shaped with an axe rather than a saw, it was mercifully free of splinters, much to her relief.

“Well, I was wondering what was up with the domains I keep hearing about. On Earth gods were all like…responsible for life, death, the sun, or other natural stuff. To explain all the things people didn’t understand way back in the stupid ages.” Vivi nodded thoughtfully, her answer already prepared.

“Mm, I can see why Tiriana would have difficulty explaining that, given her own gods, the high elves, are based upon an entirely different premise. Let me ask you this: if a god held dominion over life and death, would that be a god of humans, or a god of all existence?”

“All of existence, I suppose. Or at least all living things,” Sera replied, perplexed.

“Precisely. Those are things that must exist before humans did. But gods are formed from the collective unconscious of their people, incubating while we ourselves are in our infancy as a species and only waking when our civilizations begin to form.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“So…we made the gods?”

“In a way. The currently accepted doctrine is that gods are a defense mechanism, meant to prevent the extinction of sapient species before they can fend for themselves. No one really knows why they exist at all, but their purpose is fairly clear from the examples we have.”

“What other examples are there?” Tiriana had mentioned only the high elves, so she had assumed Omichlódis was home to no other deities but them and the human pantheon.

“The kobolds have their true dragons, of which one is here. The dwarven capital is beneath one of their earth mothers, living mountains that protected the first dwarven cities. And…” Vivi hesitated, as if unsure whether she should get into the last example, but ultimately decided to continue. “There were the Purgation, a group of hostile gods we encountered during an incursion event. Their people were hostile to all other intelligent life, and when we gained the upper hand in our war against them, the Purgation attempted to intervene in their defense.”

“Incursion event? And what happened to them?” Sera asked, drawn in by the story.

“An incursion event is what happens when, instead of nothing, or a civilization that has been or is about to be destroyed, a frontier contains those that would have destroyed it. Invaders. In this case, they were defeated by the Atlantean pantheon and wiped out. To our great shame, even to the end, we were never able to make peace with their people, who preferred to die rather than face defeat,” Vivi told her gravely, following her words with a sigh.

“How often do those happen?” After hearing that, Sera was immediately concerned about the frontier she knew was within walking distance of her current location.

“In three thousand years, there have been nine. Nowadays the Armistice Alliance maintains expeditionary fleets around the inner ring to intercept them, but the first few wars were devastating. We’ve strayed off topic, however. To return to the point, our gods represent things that set you apart from beasts. Sex is something all creatures have, but gender is a uniquely sapient phenomenon, and the human pantheon, as representatives of the human species, have a deity that presides over it.

“These domains can evolve over time, to match the current state of society- my patron began as a god of Migration, and was later a god of Exploration, before finally becoming god of Adventure.”

Sera took a few moments to absorb that information. It still felt odd, but she could at least understand the logic there. There were a few questions remaining, but not ones she thought Vivi would be able to answer, as they pertained to the gods of other species.

“Thank you for answering my questions. I wasn’t expecting you to be so willing to talk, from what Tiriana said.” Belatedly, Sera realized she maybe shouldn’t have said that last part. Vivi had a dangerous look in her eyes.

“Oh? And do tell, what did she say?”

Sera considered whether to answer, but the face Vivi was making said an answer was mandatory, one way or another.

“Just that you didn’t want to burn a miracle for small talk…?” she said in a small voice. Vivi sighed before responding.

“Well, that’s true. It’s rude to call upon my patron for something like that, but I already used it for a legitimate reason, so there’s no harm in it now. Besides, I have nothing better to do,” she told Sera, a distant look appearing on her face at that last part. When she didn’t move, Sera determined that Vivi wanted her to ask about it.

“…and why is that?”

“I’m a Cleric of Adventure. My duty is to help adventurers. Tell me, how do you think I can best serve a group of lone wolves?” Vivi asked in return, deflated. Sera immediately saw the problem. There was no way to be in every place at once, so if the adventurers refused to work together…

“…you would have to stay where they all know where to find you if they need healing,” she concluded. Vivi was the only cleric, the only healer, in their group. If she went haring off on an adventure with one person, another could die in her absence. There was no winning. Vivi sank further into her seat, reminiscent of her appearance when Sera first arrived.

“If they would just form a party I could join them too…but instead I have to just watch the shrine…and all my patron’s miracles are for stuff like mapping, or locating shelter, or creating hand-holds in a rock face." At this point the cleric looked entirely cooked, and Sera couldn’t help but pity her. No wonder she looked dead inside. She must have finished counting every spot on the walls, floor, and ceiling by now.

“So…why come here in the first place? Did you not meet them beforehand?”

“My divinations have told me there’s something big here…and that the best way I could follow my calling was to join this expedition,” Vivi said in a flat tone. “I just have to hope that someone makes a discovery soon and it draws some adventurers that can actually work together.”

“Ahaha…my condolences. Really.”

Sera had asked before if there was anything she could do to earn her keep here, and perhaps this was the best place to start. Maybe if she joined Tiriana on her next outing, she could do something for the poor soul that had ostensibly fixed her own problem, if temporarily.

Granted, she knew nothing about exploring. Or wilderness survival. Or camping. All she had was a hammer and an elven mentor, and maybe that would be enough.

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Codex Entry: Gods

All sapient species are believed to have gods, but the form and function varies wildly depending on their people. The elven gods are immortal elders, there to guide and teach, but not to lead. They are individually far less powerful than the human gods, but much more numerous. The sole known kobold god is a tyrant that demands worship and tribute, but in return, defends the kobolds much more proactively than other known deities. Dwarven earth mothers possess no mind, but provide a safe haven for their people and have been known to move in response to danger.

Even the gods do not know how they came to exist, nor why a mechanism for their existence is in place. All known gods have methods of protecting their people from extinction due to events outside their control, however. Both the elven and human gods have related tales of erasing apocalyptic meteors, and the kobold god has many such tales that vary in their believability. The human gods in particular have claimed an inability to wield their power against mortals directly.

Gods are able to grant power, however, and typically advise in a manner that promotes unity and kindness. Clerics have the ability to heal specifically because it prevents deaths due to circumstances such as disease, particularly in children, and the gods have been known to intervene to save isolated children due to their inability to protect themselves. Even the kobold true dragon promotes tolerance within the kobold species, as intraspecies strife brings no long term survival benefit.