Worshippers, Clergy, Temples | Dogma | Appearance | Relationships & History | Related Images
Tol is perhaps the oldest living god in all of Zo, let alone Eyom. She is her realm, serving as the very embodiment of Lin Forest, a primordial jungle which exists as Tol's divine realm as well as a piece of the mortal world. There is no difference between the Lin existing on the material plane and Tol's realm, they are one and the same for Tol wills it to be so. Lin Forest has existed as long as any can remember. The few memories of pre-Irisian war Constructi which have been recovered mention Lin Forest. Archeology has uncovered pre-Zoman drawings which include well known landmarks of Lin. If Tol's Chosen are to be believed, Tol has existed since before life on Zo, and it was she who first planted the seeds of life.
Tol, being the embodiment of the concept of Jungles, new life, and the spring, as well as unthinkably ancient, is the most alien of the gods. She has little to no personality, acting instead only to upkeep her realm and design new plants, animals, and monsters. She has never produced an intelligent species, though she did adopt Goblins as her chosen people with genuine joy. She is said to care for all living things, and will answer the prayers of any who call out to her in need provided they truly care for the natural world around them.
Tol is indisputably the most powerful divine known to mortalkind. Unfortunately, she simply does not care about anything outside of her purview. Not form malice or apathy, but due to seemingly bein literally incapable of thinking in the ways mortals do. Were she able to divorce her mind from her divine labors for but a moment, she could single handedly solve any of Eyom's problems. This is something her closest followers often pray for, and something which becomes slightly more possible over the ages as Tol has become a little more personable with those closest to her.
"The Primordial speaks only when she must communicate with those who cannot listen. You are not beneath Her notice, she cares deeply for all living things. She simply speaks in ways ancient and vast. To condence her thoughts into as simple and mutable a container as words is something even She struggles with. I hear the thoughts she places in the winds, the grass, and the insects. I speak with her in the arrangement of branches and burning of incense. It is an art you will not live long enough to learn. So, human, speak to me, and I shall ask Her on your behalf."
- Sērmpf̄y Vú̄nḱ "Mystioned Heaven" Ga̋ń̄ńch Ga̋nv, Chosen of Tol
On the Subject of Tol
Worshippers, Clergy, Temples
Tol is worshiped by many groups. The greatest of which are the Children of Tol (also known as Tol's Children). Tol's Children are primarily goblins most of whom live within Lin Forest and are consequently part of the nomadic lifestyle goblins predominantly enjoy. They serve to empower Tol through ritualistic practices involving offerings, tending to the forest, and tantric rituals which provide Tol with fresh life energy with witch to work.
Many others rever and worship her, almost never in any organized fashion and all without Tol's request. These people will simply keep a garden, or otherwise tend to plants. THe more exotic, the better. The entirety of their worship constitutes simple prayers to Tol while tending to their gardens. Many, but not all, who practice in this fashion are granted the same benefits Tol provides her more formal worshipers.
It is widely believed (and likly true) that Tol is not and need not be aware of her empowering followers.
Vestments
Tol does not mandate any form of uniform for her clergy, nor do her temples. However, many of her followers prefer to preform sacraments in the nude to better symbolize nature as a whole by eschewing material goods for the duration of their rituals and sacraments.
Tol is known to find this practice a little silly as she sees the products of intelligent creatures in the same way she sees bee hives, beaver dams, and birds nests. Simply a part of nature. Tol's Chosen (her personally selected priests) typically dress minimally but this is due to their ranks being predominantly Goblin in origin rather than any mandate from Tol. Non-Goblin churches who do not practice ritual nudism tend to dress in humble and practical garments, often whatever their culture sees as appropriate for farm or garden work inorder to symbolize their connection to the nature they personaly use in their daily lives.
Hierarchy
Tol's Children have a simple hierarchy based on age and merit. Each factor into how much an individual's ideas and opinions are valued by their fellows, with the over all skill and experience of their affiliated group also factoring into how they are seen by other groups of Tol's Children.
This simplistic arrangement is functionally identical to Hag covens, save that Tol's Covens can have as many members as they wish. Each Coven functionally acts as a family, and provides spiritual guidance for the community in which they live. This process is very informal.
Temples
Tol has no temples. Rather, every place dense with plant life (especially with tropical plant life) is consecrated and holy ground for those who worship her. No shrines are required to give her offerings, any overgrown patch of garden will do just fine. This makes Tol immeasurably powerful, though as she cares not for that which does not effect Lin Forest, her power matters little.
Rituals
Tol has shown her Children many rituals over the ages, but there is one which is seen as the most important to Tol specifically. The Gifting of New Life is a ritual which directly ties a worshiper (almost exclusively Goblins) to Tol, for which she grants the follower her Boon. The practitioner waits until the night after a new moon and travels to the most overgrown and primal untouched natural place they can reach before the mon reaches its zenith. There they strip naked and bask in the moonlight while wordlessly taking in the nature around them. Once they have entered a meditative state in this fashion, the practitioner then opens their mind to Tol and offers her the fruit of their womb (or seed if male).
If Tol accepts (she has delined only once in recorded history) the Practitioner gains her Boon which includes immunity to disease, life-long youth and beauty, and several abilities tied to nature itself. The price paid for this boon is the life essence of any children the practitioner would have had is given to Tol to use as she sees fit. Should the practitioner wish to have a child of their own, they simply repeat the ritual and inform Tol of their desire to be a mother or father, and Tol ensures their next union with a lover bears fruit, without taking the boon from them.
The boon is not free, and the practitioner must give Tol at least two essences a year to maintain the boon. If they fail to provide, the boon is taken away in a peaceful and harmless manner. It can be regained by preforming the ritual again, but this time a lover must be present with the practitioner to show they can provide the essence Tol desires by offering one at the time the boon is granted again.
The Gifting of New Life forms the very core of modern Goblin culture, but is rejected by traditional Goblins. Traditional Goblins receive Tol's boon regardless of their refusal to participate in her pact due to Tol's apparent unconditional love for their species. Due to its importance to Goblin culture and divine origin, most of Eyom's people do not see the ritual as evil, dark, or necromancy. However some scholars have theorized the process Tol uses to be necromantic in origin, albeit used to preform a sort of reincarnation as the life essence she harvests is used to maintain Lin Forest and to create new creatures within it. Many mages postulate this is the explanation for Lin Forest's creatures being vastly more intelligent than their counterparts elsewhere.
Tol's thoughts on the Gifting have been recorded durring one of the few instances where she directly spoke to somone outside of her worshipers.
"I do not understand these objections. Those I have granted my boon will never have an unwanted child, nor be forsed to waste the potential life they created. I take these unwanted souls and make them my own children, who will live with me untill the end of all things, gaining new forms and greater power uppon each death, should they have learned the lessons their previous life held."
- Tol
This is generaly understood to mean that Tol continiously reincarnates those offered to her, eventualy turning them into her angels and other servetns.
Orders
Due to Tol's Children and Tol's other worshipers existing as small independent cells, or even lone individuals, there are almost as many covens of Tol as there are her worshipers. None of which are any more or less well known than the others as they are generally all lumped together by the general public as if they were an organized rather than disorganized religion.
Dogma
Tol's Children have little in the way of dogma. They prefer to commune with their goddess and learn her desires day to day inorder to serve her will through a more personal and friendly relationship. Often, her desire is simply to learn about the plants and creatures near her worshipers, resulting in much of this communion being something along the lines of "Oh yes, Mister Squirrel's children are finally exploring the tree out back." and other such "tea time talk".
Tol's desires for her worshipers are often summarized by the Five Requests:
- Live in harmony with nature, eschewing neither your nature nor that of those around you.
- In short: Build, create, and innovate as you please, but ensure you do not cause undue harm to the world around you.
- Care for the creatures and plants around you as they need be cared for.
- This is best summarized as "Do not feed a carnivore an herbivore's diet to sooth your conscious and morals."
- Do not eschue your base needs for the comforts of others, but do not cause them distress in so doing.
- This is a root of modern Goblin culture. In essence, one should not suppress their sexuality but rathater express it openly. But at the same time, they should not do so intending to disgust or harm others.
- This also applies to non sexual needs, such as refusing to allow others to influence your diet, general behaviors, desire to be solitary or in groups, and so on. In essence, it's requesting people to be their unfiltered true selves at all times.
- Grow some plants or get some pets or care for some wild critters, please.
- Let me know how the plants/pets/critters are doing, please.
Appearance
Tol's true form is, in a way, Lin Forest itself. She is every plant, every animal, every stone, and every drop of water within the jungle. Occasionally she will manifest an avatar to interact with those who cannot communicate with her in her form as Lin itself. These avatars take the form of giant glowing blue women (Usually human in shape, but occasionally goblins or dragons, and once a six armed reptilian humanoid of species unknown) and appear to be made of an aurora. Despite their ethereal appearance, they are solid, and feel like living flesh if touched. Each avatar exudes an aura that instills feelings of primal joy, love, and lust in all creatures, including the undead, constructs, and creatures which cannot normally feel such things.
The aura from these avatars is so potent that she has been known to cure clinical depression permanently by having an avatar merely exist within a mile of formerly depressed individuals. The other two emotions leave their touch on everyone exposed as well, leading to all within the aura being generally more gregarious, kind, and accepting thereafter.
Scholars believe that these effects are due to Tol not spawning a true divine avatar but simply incarnating a copy of herself directly into the prime material plane. Thus, her very nature is exposed to the world without any form of shielding, warping reality to be more like the divine in the same way any divine's realm is altered to suit them specifically.
Relationships & History
Tol is impossibly old. She has experienced potentially all of Zo's history. However, due to her nature as the personification of Jungles and her divine embodiment limited to Lin FOrest specifically, her knowledge of history and importance to history is incredibly minimal. Her most typical contributions to history are the many times she ejected or massacred intelligent creatures who sought to settle in Lin Forest, eventually communicating to mortal kind that her realm was off limits. This policy has a singular exception: Goblins, whom Tol adores and has granted shelter to them and any loved ones they may take regardless of their species.
Unlike most nature gods, historic and modern, Tol holds no ill will towards civilization. She looks upon it much like a bee hive, a beaver's dam, or a bird's nest. In her eyes, some creatures create structures and intelligent creatures are no less natural for doing as they were designed to do. She makes efforts to help civilization exist in harmony with nature to the point that Goblins cities have no impact on the natural world around them. Her Chosen often assist other peoples with eliminating or mitigating the disruption of nature by their own creations, all without reducing or inconveniencing their industrial output or standards of living.
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