Thyr

God of Law and Justice;  The Lawgiver; Tyr; Tiwaz

Greater God

Alignment: Lawful Good

Domains: Community, Good, Healing, Law, Knowledge, Nobility Protection

Symbol: Silver cross on a white field

Garb: White robes trimmed with silver, purple or gold — the colors of kingship

Favored Weapons: Light mace or heavy mace (bladed weapons are forbidden)

Form of Worship and Holidays: Worship services held on the last day of every month. Midwinter eve (called Commons) is set aside for the common folk to have their grievances heard before the highest courts of the land.

Typical Worshippers: Human royalty, ruling and legislative bodies, some magistrates and judges

Thyr is the god of wise and just rule. He is normally depicted as a wizened king seated on a great throne, holding the Rod of Kingship in one hand and the Chalice of Peace in the other. His principles are justice, order and peace. He represents proper and traditional rule, and as such, was once worshipped (at least in name) by all human royalty. He is the embodiment of the enlightened human caste system where each person has a fairly determined role in a lawful society intended to create the greatest good for the greatest number.

Thyr’s symbol is a silver cross on a white field, symbolizing the upturned cross-haft of his sister’s sword, which he thrust into the earth to end the Gods’ War at the dawn of time. Upon seeing the blood of so many gods shed, Thyr foreswore the use of swords, and his priests, for this reason, may not use bladed weapons. Many favor reinforced rods, similar to light maces, modeled after Thyr’s own Rod of Kingship. The noble eagle and lion are his sacred creatures.

The Lawgiver, Thyr is a god that has transcended culture and appears in different aspects among different groups on the world of Lloegyr, spanning cultures from the Northlands to the Helcynngae Peninsula in the south. To Northlanders (and the Andøvan before them), he is known as Tiwaz and is depicted as having only one hand, the other having been bitten off by a powerful Godspawn of Chaos while Tiwaz distracted it and allowed it to be bound for the good of the world.

Thyr has actually been a part of the Hyperborean pantheon for thousands of years. For much of that empire’s history, he was considered among its chief gods and most influential in its civilization alongside Muir and Arden (and later Solanus). Thyr is also one of the ancient trinity of deities known as the Three Gods that predates the Hyperboreans. The Heldring venerate him as Tyr in much the same aspect as Thyr, though they depict him as one handed like Tiwaz.

It is unknown whether Thyr is truly a Northlands transplant or if his worship in fact developed concurrently but separately in the two different cultures. Or, for that matter, if it didn’t develop long prior to either of them existing, only to diverge somewhere along the way. In fact, it is not entirely certain that he is truly aspects of the same god (though the belief of that is near universal). Regardless, Thyr does not seem to raise any objection to the correlation, and his Thyr identity has by far been his largest church historically. The modern Heldring have formed an almost-theocratic society devoted to Tyr and Eostre (their name for Muir), and their hledwalda petitions annually for the High Altar of Thyr to be moved from Bard’s Gate to Kingsgardt in the Kingdom of the Helcynn. The empress of the actual theocracy of Alcaldar likewise presses for it to be established in the imperial capital of Mhaltra. To date, Thyr’s clergy has remained silent on the subject of relocation, though patience wears thin among the royalties of those respective nations.

Despite his millennia of success and the establishment of no fewer than two current monarchies largely based on his faith, Thyr has seen a near-continuous decline across the breadth of old Hyperborean lands, especially since the rise of the Eastern god Mitra. However, his high priest notes that this decline cannot be laid fully at the feet of the upstart Mitra because it actually precedes his dramatic appearance to Overking Osbert II several centuries ago. Rather, High Priest Bofred of Bard’s Gate points out that the first hints of the decline had occurred even before the end of the Hyperborean Empire, much less the current decline of the Foerdewaith in recent centuries, pointing to a subtle but pervasive omnipresent diminishment in civilization over this time period. Bofred and others fear this diminishment may be a harbinger of worse things to come.