Purdue Fantasy Club

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====== Rudri/Tenebrus ======
//“I have spoken with you long, mother. I have asked of you much and you have answered me most graciously. With this final question, I do take my leave. What one singular task can I perform to be of the greatest service to you?”//

//The Night leaned in and whispered in a voice as soft as a thunderclap, as calm as a summer storm, and as blinding as a dead star. “Ignore every word I have said.”//

** Verse 18, stanza 9, the Book of Moons; details a conversation between the Night and the Girl with the Red Scarf. **

Rudri is the uncaring god of change and darkness and finality.  Spawning from the primordial world, manifesting from the sheer fact of Entropy. Rudri is not a person. Rudri is sentient change. Rudri is the fundamental desire of all reality to be something different. Rudri fuels change and is in turn fueled by it. From a game of chance to a bloody revolt. From the placement of atoms to the motion of stars. If there is chance, there is Rudri.

This is not the Rudri that people worship. This Rudri is not an actor, or a prop, or even a member of the audience. This Rudri is the stage itself. 

Rudri does not care about much anything. Rudri knows how the world will end up. An incomprehensibly long amount of time later all matter and structure will decay to chaos. Rudri sits at a table with gods and mortals not caring about what cards are dealt for there are no stakes that matter.

===== Nature of Rudri =====
Due to this nature, Rudri is not a god that interacts with followers normally. Rudri does not select avatars and champions. Rudri’s avatars are merely catalysts and products of change. At the current moment most Avatars are sapient beings simply because the possibility of thought makes so much more chance possible than an equivalent hunk of meat. If every sapient being were to end then Rudri would be a bag of sand, or a swirl of air, or the currents of magma calderas. Rudri ceases to exist only when existence itself ceases to exist. 

Everyone and everything is Rudri because there is nothing that does not change and does not have possibilities. Some are simply more Rudri than others. 

Rudri, or rather the most Rudri, is currently a person who is worshipped as Tenebrus by those followers closest to her.

==== Tenebrus, Avatar of Rudri ====
//The boy looked at the girl and the two siblings embraced, hot tears rolling down their cheeks and dripping onto the ground. The pack of wolves closed in. They had hunted for nine days and nights, but tonight they feasted on the blood of men. The girl cried out for her mother as her flesh was rent from bone.//

//Suddenly, the world stilled. The twins gazed upwards at the sky, for there had the moon turned crimson. In a voice of love, it called down. “I am not your mother but I can be your sister, little cubs. Will you join my family?”//

//Without hesitating, the two accepted. Not with words, but with their souls, for they knew inherently that this being meant them no harm.//

//In a flash of lightning, a woman of celestial majesty stood by their side. She turned to the wolves and spoke, “If it is flesh you want brothers, then I offer you mine.” In response, the pack fell upon her and tore off her flesh. When they were done, they howled at the moon and raced into the forest as one.//

//Tenebrus, now wreathed in smoke and night turned to the twins and smiled. “Welcome home, my siblings.”//

** The Thirteenth of Dawning, Chapter 3, demonstrates Tenebrus’ mastery of all beasts as well as her unending love for all who accept her as savior. **

Tenebrus is the mightiest Rudri in all existence at this moment. She runs with wolves and flies with ravens. She gazes at the world from her moons. Tenebrus wears the night as a cloak and writes with quills made from swann feathers. 

Her forms are myriad and changing, and as a god, she has complete control over her appearance, but she does have a few common forms she takes. A wraith made of shadows and smoke, a wolf with grey fur and a lock of red, a raven with white feathers, a dark-haired, pale-skinned woman with a quick smile, a thunderstorm with steel grey lightning, or a hulking crimson moon that stretches from horizon to horizon.

Tenebrus is a patron of hunters, painters, travelers, assassins, siblings, and gamblers. She enjoys helping civilizations rise to witness the madness they bring. A common pastime of hers is sending Rudrites to kill heads of state, to feast on the disarray this leaves behind.

Though she has forgotten much of her former life before her three ascensions, she remembers living off the forest and being profoundly bored with it. She chose to join Rudri’s dark flock so that her life would have excitement.
 
When not wandering the material planes, Tenebrus spends her time in the Dehubris.

===== Hirudo =====
Hirudos are inducted priests of Rudri, chosen to ascend to a higher level of divine power. Rather than sustain themselves, their power and essence stems almost directly from Rudri. This act leaves their bodies empty husks and their souls as mere conduits for power. While this slows their bodies down and leaves them physically inferior to other mortals, when empowered even slightly by their god or by the world around them their might grows manifold. 

Some Hirudo may be made by other Hirudo choosing to empower other people or Rudrites. Some may be made by Rudri’s own will. Either way, they are meant to be perfect representations of chaos and change. Rudri is not opposed to her Hirudo holding positions of powers in structures of order, but if they stagnate for too long then she is more than willing to take that power away from them.

===== Priestly Culture =====
//“These are my laws. Ignore them.”//

** Tenebrus making her will known to her Hirudos. **

Rudri is a being of change. She has no sins. She does not tell what her followers what they should do, but she does judge them based on their actions. To Tenebrus, actions opposing change are inherently heretical and as such she punishes people whom she thinks are opposing change. Her definition of change is incredibly subjective and depends on the person in question. If they can justify that the actions they are performing will hasten growth and chance rather than slow it down to themselves then she is willing to permit those actions as righteous. 

Tenebrus has personal opinions as well on just and unjust actions, she does not like the targetted slaughter of people who have siblings and people who oppose progress and industry and will exact vengeance against people who do such actions, but she fully acknowledges that these choices are her as the once-mortal Tenbrus and not the concept of change Rudri.

If her priests go out of their way to defy Tenebrus’ will then she will torment them with visions of the Dehubris swallowing and tormenting them, but she will never take away their powers as no action or inaction is heretical to Rudri.