The below was common knowledge before the coming of Awakened, and then with the uprising of the Feral and the Great War that followed, there was a resurgence in belief. Now it is again known by all but not deemed quite as important since these gods have been made flesh:

The sun, named Caas, so full of golden light, drifted alongside the jade earth, called Desidra, for millennia. They did not converse at first, each too focused on their own internal workings to truly notice the other. When they did begin to cast their attention outward, they discovered a likeness in their celestial neighbor and began a slow exchange of self. It started merely as a way to pass the time, but in that time they developed a deep friendship, and from that bloomed an even deeper love. Finally, Caas, unable to contain his need to touch Desidra any longer, sent lighting down from the skies, searing the earth’s flesh and creating their first child, Gadel, son of glass and see-er of truth.

However, the moon with its silver shine, named Neden, who came and went as he pleased, saw this union and began to want after one of his own. Each night when Caas was away, he wooed Desidra, giving her the gift of a glittering, star-filled sky and promising her gentler affections. Eventually, Desidra acquiesced to Neden’s advances, letting him slip across her skin and Thryn was born, the mist that rises before the sun. Caas blazed at Desidra when he learned of this, and the jade mother accepted the deserts his anger brought but did not weep, for they had grown apart since Gadel’s birth.

Neden visited Desidra no more often after their joining than before, but she expected little else from one as capricious as him. Desidra was content in herself and in her two children, though she could not help but notice the affect the two very different fathers had on their offspring: Caas’s regular visits gave Gadel a bold nature, while the waxing and waning of Neden led Thyrn to be quiet and standoffish. It was because of this that Desidra grew a newfound respect for her first love and his constancy. In a show of that, on a day when the sky was clear and in full view of Caas, she made some of her tallest mountains spew liquid fire from their tops, their heat rivaling the intensity of the sun and lifting to touch him. And so it was that their second child was born, Keldii, the daughter of reignited passion.

It is these very gods and their children who watch over us lesser beings, not only in life but when we pass, for it is unspeaking Thyrn who takes your soul and brings it to Gadel, who weighs your worth and decides if you shall enter Desidra’s embrace, a place of familial warmth, where your delights are satisfied by Keldii’s music and art; or if you shall be sent to Caas to reforge your soul, with his thunder and lightning, to have the chance to walk the earth again and make a better turn of it; or if your run is done, and you will become part of Neden’s treasure, to sit in the cold sky, alone, only able to watch as life continues on.

All save the Islanders, of course, who worship the gods who came long before Caas, and Desidra, and Neden, or any of their get. So old they don’t even have names, just words spoken in opposite. When followers of the two great forces die, they return to the ebb and flow that drives all things.

Popular rhyme after the fall of Awakened:

One day, silent Thryn will come for your breath,

and Gadel’s stern gaze will weigh you in death.

To Desidra’s warm embrace you go if you lived right,

where Keldii’s creations provide unending delight.

To Caas’s forge instead if there is good in you yet.

or Neden’s jail if you are judged no better than het.

Unless the Island is where you call home,

then to and fro you shall forever roam.