✨UPDATE: I’ve reworked all of the other gods’ design language so that they all have a consistent style. I’m keeping the multiple arm and face motif going throughout, hence the updated design for Duneos.
I drew this over the weekend and I’ve decided to line up all the gods and goddesses together, so that people may become familiar with the whole pantheon. I figured by drawing one character profile at a time like this it doesn’t take much time, but in the end it will be a pretty Impressive spread. Along with the divines, I’ll draw each of the mortal races of Concavia, arrayed in a line beneath the divine ones, so the differences in size can be seen and so faces can be set to names.
Now, to talk about Duneos:
Duneos’ name is drawn from several Proto-Indo-European roots meaning storm-cloud, might, sky, heaven, brightness, and shining. He is the god of the realm between Leuada (the sun) and Concavia (the land).
Duneos is associated with the oak tree, his worshippers often leave offerings in oak groves. Oaks are more likely than other trees to be struck by lightning, which likely fostered this link. Their wild, twisting branches also recall the shape of Duneos’ lightning in the observer. From this sprang the epithet “the Striker,” by which many peoples and cultures know him in their own tongues.
Some cultures now divide him into two or more deities in their own oral traditions, sometimes as father and son, sometimes as the sky itself and the storm prince. Yet the Alves remember their Father as he truly was, and they taught this truth to the Nunacairn of Talend.
Another of his epithets is “Sky-Father,” for he fathered the race of Alves, from whom the magical bloodlines of mortals stem. Those able to wield “the Craft” (magic) are most often found in a people’s royal line, which bound Duneos to sovereignty itself and won him the title of King of the Gods.
As already told, Duneos is the patriarch of the Alves, who were brought into the world by Florawah, his loving wife.
Duneos, like all the gods, does not always walk the world in the form you see before you. The divine ones often go abroad in the guise of natural things. Firalah may pass as a rangale of deer, and Florawah as a cloud of dandelion puffs borne on a light breeze. Duneos himself might appear as a thunderhead, the eye of a storm, or a long flash of lightning. Yet the form in which he is shown is his true divine manifestation.
After the war of heaven, which brought the Age of Silver to a close, all the gods’ forms were destroyed except for Mehter and the sleeping sun god Leuada. Their souls dispersed, seeping into the works they had shaped in Concavia, and their will became scattered and unfocused. Yet, though their essence lingered everywhere in a dreamlike haze, they could still be stirred at times by a worthy prayer, spell, or offering. Duneos’ will or omens could be read by holy men through augury (the reading of the flight of birds).