Resplendent Bestowing of Prosperity
In appearance, the Resplendent Bestowing of Prosperity is a massive, bulky man with red skin and six arms. Where a human face would have eyes, nose and mouth, Resplendent Bestowing’s is featureless, though his attendants oft paint stylized ‘eyes’ in pigments of gold and sapphire upon him. In place of hair, a nest of snakes sprouts from his head, and it is their eyes and tongues by which the spirit senses the world around him. Each snake wears a ribbon of blue, matched in color to the robe covering the spirit’s body, though that garment is strange amongst the fashions of Yu Shan for its woolen coarseness.
In the manner of the Most High, each of Resplendent Bestowing’s arms bears one object from his panoply: the uppermost bear large rings of Orichalcum and Moonsilver, the former said to be a chakram which can strike unerringly and the latter a binding which cannot be broken. His middle arms carry a marriage contract and an incense bowl, from which comes the glow of embers and the smoke of cinnamon. His lower arms carry a fresh placenta and a sack of coins, though local cultures vary in naming the contents as Jade, Silver, or cowrie shells.
The Resplendent Bestowing of Prosperity is the God of Matrimony and Marriage in the Celestial Bureaucracy’s Bureau of Heaven. A consummate bureaucrat, the Resplendent Bestowing has always been known as a vocal backer of the Unconquered Sun, and while he worked closely with the Solar Exalted and Lytek during the First Age, since the Usurpation he has also earned the favour of Ryzala and the Bronze Faction. Throughout, the Resplendent Bestowing has jealously guarded his purview against attempts from the gods of lust and romance to lay claims, holding that such things have no place amongst the family relations and production of offspring which are the purpose of matrimony.
The Resplendent Bestowing is known to favour monogamous relations, and permanence in marriage, but has not worked to push these inclinations deeper into Creation’s understanding of wedding. So long as marriages are properly considered as the commitment contracts they are, their god can look upon them and be pleased. Those entered into and abandoned frivolously, however, are sure to earn his ire.
