I've wrestled with this too. My guess (and its only a guess) is that Beltine isn't as sweet as the official MC presentation. Think of the Grey Crones and depictions of the ever hungry cauldron. So you're Illiir and you want to put a check and a balance on her. Who do you turn to? Cadic? Cadic is connected to Beltine and his loyalty might be suspect. How about your eldest son with the huge flaming sword? I'm pretty sure no one talks back to Nier to his face. Nier is good at following orders. Illiir says, Nier you get jurisdiction over judgement. And I want you to judge the dead. And Nier orders the Judgement to weigh souls on a predetermined scale. The good go to the paradise of the gods. The really bad get the torments of Neroth. Everyone else gets recycled in the Cauldron. And Beltine doesn't send all souls to the ever hungry cauldron.

Just a suspicion.

I completely understand what you mean about the timeline being vague when it comes to how much time passed between events. I was considering that possibility myself. I recall a creationist theory that the 7 days God took to create the Earth could be a simple representation of the millions of years that it took, and the natural forces were the tool that God used.
Manetas could have been tempted before or during the Gods' War and then fallen after the Gods came to Onara and taken a century to build up his cult. Except that BRoN states that Sarish's intent of influencing Manetas was to prevent Illiir's Valinor from defeating Neroth's. This wasn't about a long game, this was about an immediate problem, Illiir was winning. He didn't care about Manetas, he was just using him to make sure Illiir didn't win. It worked because Manetas became a larger problem. One that Sarish also had to deal with.
As a note the Love of Illiir confirms that it was the Cunning of Sarish that trapped Manetas the first time.
You mentioned that it is canon that peace was made between the Pantheon after the Other started the Gods' War. While it makes sense they didn't fight each other while a larger threat loomed, there is no evidence they remained on peaceful terms once the Other was imprisoned. Perhaps Neroth liked the Myrantian Empire and decided to help them, Illiir took offence and fought him. Who can tell with Gods.

Mainly I have my doubts about anything that happened before the Pantheon came to Onara, such as the Gods' War. A simple example: the Pillars of Nier are stated to be 2 different things. Nier's tears after the Gods' War ended. And 5 drops of his blood that feel while he fought the Other and Keleos. Considering the Gods' War ended before coming to Onara, and all 5 pillars are located on Onara the tears story doesn't make sense. The entire Mythic Age seems to come to us from the Church rather then from historical records or archeological sites. And they are usually parables, stories designed to teach, but just stories.
As for the 1/3 of the host, it makes sense that following the Love of Illiir's comment that none of them could be killed because they are each a different part of their God, but they could be banished, like the honor of Cadic was, or they could be imprisoned like the Hated of Neroth. If you believe the Mythic Age story from the Church Sarish tempted many Valinor away from their Gods before even coming to Onara. But if you follow the facts, 1/3 of the Host became fallen and had to dealt with in -2065 IC. Sarish could have taken the opportunity to strengthen his forces, help fight Entropy, allow the Fallen Valinor at a chance at redemption, and imprison the trouble makers all at the same time. The current year is 1071 IC. That is 3000 years for the church to hid the fact that Valinor are fallible and don't always have human interests, and Sarish becomes the bad guy instead of the saviour.
I love your analysis but I don't trust your source material when you are quoting things from the Mythic Age. Elorii and the Ssethrics have detailed recorded history of what was going on during that time on Onara. Humans have parable and scripture of what was happening on the Western Continent. If you check Ssethric, Dwarven and Elorii sources there is zero mention of Valinor until after Belestor fell. An Elorii present during the Human-Elorii war tells PCs while the Elorii were surprised by the beginning of the war, they turned the war around and started winning. Then the Valinor showed up and turned the tide.
Cody is right about the Valinor having roles, and varying degrees of power once Manetas is referred to as an Arch-Valinor. Also he is called the "most powerful of Illiir's Valinor." Their roles follow closely with their title. The Mercy of Neroth gave mercy to Death, The serenity of Beltine allowed the spirits of the dead to rest peacefully. But their primary purpose seems to be for battle. During the Battle of Grand Coryan Every single Valinor that could appear did, and they fought each other in the skies above the city they bathed the battlefield below them in blood. They wield powerful weapons, that would be epic in 3.5 and legendary quality now. They ruined the Elorii, they laid low the dragons, they destroyed any enemy the Gods decreed was a threat to man. Xabal was able to destroy an entire Infernal city single handily. Just as the Ssethrics created the Elorii to wage war, the Gods created the Valinor to wage war, or more precisely to fight when humanity was in danger of losing.

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to say how much I am enjoying this conversation. Thank you!

As an aside, I wrote up an explanation of how a Valinor "falls" and posted it on the old Yahoo Group, but for the life of me I can't find it.

Does anyone have a copy of that write-up?

Alas, this was probably before my time in the campaign and the Yahoo search is kind of. . . let us say not good.

If you have some public knowledge you'd like to share, however, I'd love to see it

I'm posting without any of my references, so my numbers, spelling, and references will be a little iffy, but here are some additional thoughts.

1. I think the vision mentioned by the priestess of Yig in the Ssethregore book indicating that Kassegore forsaw the coming of the PoM and the Silence and set about to deal with the threat the Silence represented occurred 1,700 years before the PoM came to the shore of Onara. Plenty of time to possibly start influencing the PoM. It seems odd that they would wait an extra 1,700 years and have their first contact with the PoM be when Yig appeared as Anshar. Especially since we have no idea what the PoM looked like at the time. Possibly even enough time to sneak in as member in another name.

2. According to legend mentioned in the Canceri book, all the PoM gods started with the same number of Valinor. (I assume excepting only Anshar) This is the only location this is mentioned, and is legend even then, so the veracity of it is highly questionable.

3. According to the legend provided in the BRoN, Manetas was corrupted by Sarish and converted 1/3 of the Illiric host to his rebellion. This slowed down Illiir in his was against Neroth. (whose Valinor where almost wiped out - though I think we know of 3-4 after that date). This is in contrast to the 1/3 of the total Valinor host that appeared to be allied with Manetas at the end of the last campaign - including valinor of Neroth.

4. The God's war is when the God's fought the Other, before the founding of the Emperium. The Mythic Age is when they all fought each other back on the home continent to the east. So all these stories indicate the Valinor existed back on the eastern continent

5. Also according to that legend from BRoN it was only about a century from Manetas's fall to when he started to cause trouble in the first emperium. This doesn't jive with the amount of time from the formation of the emperium to when he started to cause trouble (which was more than a century after the God's war ended according to the BL release). But I assume it is accurate enough to indicate that there was not a long time of peace between the PoM before the God's war apparently united them

I've been thinking that the description of the age of legend sure seems to indicate the possibility of city states or tribes, each with their own god who fought, allied, and inter-related in a lot of ways. It explains their lack of a common language before Althare's gift. I've also wondered if these god's "evolved" on the eastern continent (or elsewhere other than Onara), and thus became god's there, isn't that the more intelligent place for the Sorcerer King to be looking for the "Birthplace of the Gods?" (I've also been trying to explore the idea that the pantheon might be composed of either 1 large or 2 different adventuring groups that found the Birthplace of the Gods and uplifted themselves - trying to figure out each God's roles in a party etc. It would explain the conflict between the leader of each party to become the leader of the combined pantheon)

I too had this thought. I wonder if Kassegore is actually one of the members of the PoM. But we have no proof yet. And none of the other Val families have anything unusual about them, like val'Inares. Except val'Abebi and their ability to speak to Althares.


Actually this information is given in the BRoN. Again information given by the church. And like you said we know it's not true because of Anshar.


1/3 did NOT side with Manetas during the Coryani Civil War. The Host was divided by 3 but NOT in equal parts, the smallest group was those that fought against Manetas. The largest were those that didn't choose a side. The Love of Illiir told us this info. The split could have been 5%/45%/50%, or 15%/20%/65% or any combination that meets her words.


Yes they do. The humans have stories about Valinor being present at the time, and of them coming with them to Onara, and of stories of the Other corrupting Valinor and bringing those ones with him. But in the Codex Arcanis pg 176 -179 from when human arrive to the founding of the 3 Elorii nations there is no mention of Valinor or even winged beings. They didn't get off the boats with the Other, they weren't with the 11 Gods of the Pantheon. They weren't there during the taking of Belestor. There is no mention of anything but Gods and humans. This section is written from the perspective of the Elorii. And we all know Henry loves playing with perspective. So of course the human churches would say Valinor have always been around. When in fact they have not been. The first time Valinor really show up is during the fighting against the Elorii. When the humans started losing the Valinor appeared and saved them. The second set of stories about Valinor comes from the Dragon War. They were used by Celestial Giants to kill and imprison the dragons. The Celestial Giants, allies to the humans, witnessed these battles so their names are recorded. These are the stories we make our list of names from.

As an interesting aside. The history in the Blessed Lands book mentions that the Gods left Onara a few decades after founding the First Imperium and we assume it was on their time traveling journey. But both the BRoN and the Codex make it seem like the Gods were still around. The BRoN states the Illiir and Neroth were fighting before Manetas did his coup. And the Codex mentions that Illiir made the deal with Celestial Giants around the time of the Theocracy of the Cleansing Flame. And it specifically mentions that the Celestial Giants were cursed by Illiir AFTER Leonydas was defeated. In fact the Love of Illiir states "Not long after the fall of the First Imperium, the Gods left to somehow defeat the coming of Oblivion." So the Blessed Lands history written from the human perspective is only right that the Gods left the humans but not Onara. And our assumption that Gods went time traveling immediately after is wrong.

We can't have a conversation about Valinor without including the Gods. There is something about the stories of the PoM that makes them seem so...mortal. Just like legends of the Greek Gods. Hence our theory that they were in fact mortal and became something more powerful.

I suspect that if you were to take inventory of all of the religions of Earth, the majority would have gods who were imperfect, or flawed in some way. My favourite is the 'heathen' pantheon of northern Europe; the Aesir, Vanir, Jotun, etc. I believe that this is also common in the religions of continental India, as well as aboriginal north americans. With that said, the concept of mortals becoming divine is relatively rare. The norse believed that princesses could become Valkyrie, but not actual full-fledged deities. I believe that there may be some examples of heroes becoming divine in greek or roman myth, but I'm not as well read there.

What I'm getting at is that real-world religions with infallible deities are relatively few. Don't assume that the Arcanis pantheon was once mortal, simply because they seem flawed in some way.

One thing that I don't think has been fully explored on the forums yet is the question of what happens to a deity when they lose a Valinor, and whether that deity can ever regain what they lost. Could it be that the deities are flawed because of the Valinor they have lost? I think it is fair to assume that when they were born, each deity had a larger group of Valinor than they do now. I can't think of any examples in the books or modules of deities creating new Valinor...just stealing them from other gods. It really would be interesting to know more about the relationship between Valinor and Gods.

A few semi-random "addendum"

(1) The val Abebi claim to speak to Altheres but that doesn't make it true (necessarily). Its not like a call on a cell phone. Most of those who "hear" Altheres do so after a long purification ritual, in an extended meditation while fasting and inhaling special incense. That is to say that there is *plenty* of room for a cynic, doubter or skeptic to find (ahem) alternative explanations for so called divine inspiration that follows. At the same time we also have the (First &) Second Gift which clearly didn't spring from empty air or drugs. Altheres is at least intermittently in touch with Altheria.

(2) I recall at least one tale of the Other arriving on the shores of Onara with bedraggled followers and some "degenerate" Valinor who he had managed to seduce away from the PoM. Can't lay my finger on it. I think the Valinor stay in the background of this tale until the PoM orders them to drive off the taller elorii.

(3) Again, I've never seen a reference to a Valinor of Yaris. I don't think he has any. Doesn't mean I'm right. (And the val'Ossan don't turn into fishmen as they grow older unlike the val'Inares) ... Maybe we'll meet one someday. Or not. Almost as much weirdness and mystery around the val'Osssan as the val'Holryn.

(4) Henry has trotted out a metaphor that I repeat he periodically that the gods are like wheel hubs and Valinor represent "spokes." Loosing a Valinor does not directly affect the hub. Its unknown if Gods have the ability to make new valinor.

(5) There are secrets suggested in the old module For the Lesser Gods that if true are very suggestive about the Other and the nature of time. Its basically the Ehtzara's secret history of the Mythic Age. Worth a look or buying a copy from drive thru (IMO).

I must be missing something here. What happens to the val'Inares?

The val'Inares have a very. . . interesting heritage which manifests when they get older.

As to the val'Ossans, there is evidence in an Invisible Kings mod that they do have some. . . fishy heritage, but as that wasn't written by Team Paradigm the canonicity is a little more suspect.