Patrons are an important part of life and death in the world of Aggenmor.

In life, a Patron can grant you abilities beyond mortal prowess. In death, a Patron takes care of your soul when you die.

In game terms, there’s a “soft cap” at level 11. That’s as far as you can go unaided. By establishing a Pact, you unlock the remaining levels and all sorts of cool shit happens.

In this Behind the Scenes, we’ll set aside several things:

The nature of the various Pacts one can earn,

the True Gods and their Pacts,

the Demons and their Pacts,

The Elder Things and their Pacts,

The Elder Gods and their Pacts

not taking a Patron at all,

and instead focus instead on something else: The life cycle of an Elemental King.

We haven’t talked about them, have we?

Aggenmor is held together with a complex network of magical threads, commonly known by mages as ley lines. Magic is supposed to flow normally throughout them, but it’s easy for them to get tangled, plugged, and fucked up.

Those that worship the True Gods don’t pay much attention to such things. All real power comes from the True Gods, after all. Also, magic is inherently dangerous, toxic, and destructive anyway. What’s less known is that the ley lines also follow under the auspices of the lunatic Elder Things, and nobody wants to deal with them.

Anyway, The evolution of an Elemental King:

An area of land has a confluence of ley lines that affect the environment. Rocks are bigger, more robust, water is pure, and materials drawn from these places have magical properties. Living things in this area become affected by the magical energies in this area. Trees are larger, animals may mutate. Something "awakens" and has an intelligence roughly akin to a human child. They cannot leave the area to which they're tied at without permanently losing any benefits they’ve picked up. Animals will be particularly intelligent, crafty, and dangerous. Plants may develop sentience, but they’re (usually) *ahem* rooted to one spot. People affected by this sort of thing are usually mutants and shunned by regular people. Kami

Kami are nature-based spirits that typically reside in unique natural areas: A particularly vibrant tree in a forest, or an unusual pile of stones on a cliffside, a particularly clear lake, all of these are places where kami typically reside. These places often occur where ley lines intersect.

Kami are often described as calm, polite, and curious, though they can also be savage, mercurial, and whimsical. A kami is often supportive of anyones' endeavors, as long as they do not pose a direct threat to the kami itself or their living space. It is prudent to say that kami also have a fundamentally different way of looking at the world, so their logic is not the logic of humans.

A kami is typically chaotic neutral in alignment and will treat with anyone that does not threaten their dwelling, where they are bound. They also begin experimenting with taking on a human(like) form in order to interact with people around them.

There are a variety of stories that revolve around kami; that they have many abilities and are deities in and of themselves. This is untrue. They only have power in their sacred area, but they can provide temporary blessings of providence and prosperity. A farmer's crops my grow well, or a merchant may find his caravan on a safer path after receiving a blessing.

Shrine Maidens typically build their shrines and temples around the sacred area and 'adopt' the local kami as their Patron. In exchange for reverence and protection, the kami provide shrine maidens with the ability to use spells.

Kami abhor abominations and find them incredibly offensive.

Kami do not revere the True Gods and Goddesses because they are apart from nature.

Kami do not revere the Elder Things because they are insane, broken things. Rather, kami revere and bless their own sacred areas, thus increasing the providence and prosperity of their territory.

Local God

If they continue to stay connected to the ley lines and don't die from illness, disease, old age, or [anything else that might kill them] for several hundred years, their intelligence, wisdom and magical prowess skyrocket and they can work small miracles around the area they live. They can confer blessings, cure diseases and poisons, grant bountiful harvests, augur the future, etc. At this point they are considered "Local Gods" because they don't often leave the area from which they spawned.

Incidentally, “Local Gods” is considered a game term. The average person will consider them especially potent kami.

Elemental King

If a Local God is allowed to flourish, and is worshipped, they may rank up to an Elemental King.

An Elemental King is very much like a Local God, but their powers grow more diverse and can cover a larger area. They begin to take control of the cycle of death and rebirth in their area. They are fiercely protective of what they consider 'theirs'.

Their attitudes are always vague and mercurial; they do not have human comprehensions or emotions as we know them. The times a Local God or an Elemental King demonstrates human emotions or understandings, it is a farce, something they created and decided on a whim to emulate.

At this point it’s important to understand that all Elemental Kings are subservient to the Nameless Stone. The Nameless Stone refuses to take on the responsibility of becoming a direct Patron. Rather, kami, local gods, and Elemental Kings gather souls via Pacts, and basically act as an intermediary for reincarnation.

From a Mortal perspective, a person may make a Pact with whatever Patron appeals to them at the time. What many don’t realize is that since that Patron essentially becomes their advocate for reincarnation, whatever Patron they choose becomes their Patron for every life; they simply “rediscover” their Patron the next time they’re reborn and reach the level cap.

Note that this has nothing to do with the Pacts with the True Gods, Demons, Elder Gods, Dragons, or Elder Things. They have their own systems of Pacts and rewards.