Salt God

Description

Salt gods are little gods found in across Creation. Their purview is Salt, a substance which is naturally bound into earth and sea water... on paper at least, their purview is in fact the maintenance and preservation of this nature-bound salt. Given that salt is vital for preservation and industry, and for repelling malicious ghosts, salt and its divinities are intimately linked with the growth of human civilization, for the purview of the gods and the growth of civilization are inimical to each other.

Appearance

Salt gods are small beings, appearing as hairless humanoid figures encrusted with salt crystals of blue and white. They are legless, bodies instead dissipating below, salt crystals sprinkling out behind them. Salt gods can move over the surface of land and water with equal ease, but are not capable of true flight.

The eyes of salt gods are glassy and vary in colour, in ways many observers have tied to the appearance of local salt.

Salt gods will often appear wearing luxurious jewelry and accessories, obtained through the sacrifices granted them by those seeking to extract salt, as pert of the Salt Rate.

Behaviour

Salt gods are greedy and vindictive creatures, who are well aware of how vital their purview is to civilization, and ready to demand as much as they can in exchange for it. The threat of the Scarlet Empress bringing to bear the full power of the Scarlet Dynasty, Immaculate Order, and Imperial Manse cowed the salt gods of the Blessed Isle into accepting a Salt Rate negotiated by the Throne, but with those pressures now relaxing such gods begin to act as their brethren in the Threshold have been for centuries. In the present time, membership in salt cults continues to grow as the gods become more daring and extreme in their demands.

Salt Gods are known to have a particular hatred for Albatrosses.

Salt Gods in the Celestial Bureaucracy

Salt gods are terrestrial gods working under the aegis of the Bureau of Nature, nominally subordinate to the god of salt Glimmering Nacal, though since the Balorian Crusade no salt gods have recognized his authority. Their greatest allies and supporters tend to be found in the Bureau of Humanity, where purviews depend on salt to persist and grow. Certain exceptions to divine law were granted the salt gods long ago, and the wording of these has been used to wiggle out of audits and punishments by Heaven's Censors, which has made reeling in these little gods all but impossible for Yu-shan's Bureaus.

History of Salt

The history of the salt gods explains this contradiction, an example of the chaos which followed in the wake of the Primordial War and the adaptability of the Celestial Bureaucracy. In the times of prehistory, when the Primordials moved freely through Creation and races such as the Dragon Kings ruled over humanity, salt was far less important. There was no Underworld and no Ghosts to ward away, no teeming human masses needing to preserve their food and drive their industries. Where today salt is key, other methods were used: vinegars, sugar-curing, and smoking abounded, and in those days where the component souls of the Primordials walked readily alongside the gods and the essence-using beings they favoured, magical approaches were seen commonly. The Dragon Kings’ intense concern with freshness, seen in their belief in living sacrifices and foodstuffs, and expressed in their Vegetative Technology, meant the largest of Creation’s civilizations (including the humans who were their subjects) did not feel the absence of salt, and different techniques of forging & alchemy were employed (many of which are now lost to the mists of time).

Still, salt saw some use. Though it was not naturally separable from earth or sea, a mechanism of extraction existed involving the invocation of the great Elemental of Water and Elemental of Earth whose power allowed the release of salt from its natural state into a pure one. The god of salt, Soh-Da, oversaw these efforts and held an intimate understanding of the underlying theology and essence flows involved in the process, which was aided by artifice of Primordial construction.

In the wake of the Primordial War, the Exalted took up the Mandate of Heaven, and the population of humans began to grow. The Exalted, driven to great accomplishment, began to seek new methods and paths, and humans themselves took up more practical experimentation along similar lines. The utility of salt was revealed, but along with it problems: the great elementals were gone, and in their place had begun to emerge new elementals of earth and water, vicious and bitter beings whose sole intent was to keep salt in its natural state. They could be slain, of course, but once dead a new elemental would emerge quickly upon the spot where the extraction was being attempted, equally vicious and destructive. Though no match for a Celestial Exalt, such elementals could devastate unescorted mortals… useful salt (becoming even more valued as its usefulness against ghosts was discovered) could not be practically harvested on any significant scale… and, worse (particularly for those hoping on spirit genocide as a solution), during the brief interludes between the death of an elemental and the rising of a new one, salt simply refused to be extracted at all.

Resolution of this crisis was not easy: it was quickly concluded that some mechanism within the panoply of the God of Salt had overcome the drive of the great elementals to keep salt in its natural state, but what this system was or how it might be revived was unknown. The great elementals were now destroyed, and Soh-Da as well, his loyalty to his Primordial masters having seen him destroy his records and the mechanisms vital to his purview when gods loyal to the Incarnae stormed his offices as the conflict began, the already-sparse ranks of his subordinates purged entirely by war’s end. The Primordials who had created those processes were now fallen, the only survivor Isidoros offering promise to ‘free salt as all things should be free’ if the gods invoked the oaths of his surrender to command his aid… a prospect the Incarnae chose not to entertain.

The new god of salt, Glimmering Nacal, was ambitious and driven, an active supporter of the Unconquered Sun, but seizing the job without its accouterments meant there was little that could be done directly. Glimmering Nacal instead pushed a solution that would stabilize his purview and staff his office: the Bureau of Nature ought establish a new department, and the salt elementals would be elevated to staff it.

The consternation brought on by this proposal was significant in Yu-shan, for the elementals were surely inferior beings, below even the terrestrial divinities. But while the Bureau of Heaven initially decried the decision, Nacal’s influence in the Bureau of Nature swayed those gods to consider the idea, and the Bureau of Humanity emerged vocal in support, for reliable salt was key to the expansion of their purviews, a gain far greater than the loss from calling a few lesser beings kin. At length, Heaven relented… some few knowledgeable about such things whisper that it was the danger posed by an alliance between Nature and Humanity forged on common ground such as this, rather than any true change of heart, which made the Bureau give way.

In those times, when the Incarnae worked active through the Celestial Bureaucracy, the Five Elemental Dragons had yet to fall into slumber, and the Primordials Gaia and Autochthon still moved through the streets of Heaven, the forging and elevation of new divinities on a significant scale still persisted, if lessened from its full force under the Primordials. As would be seen in the natural evolution of the Lesser Elemental Dragons, elemental spirits were touched by divinity to become something different, accepted amongst the ranks of the gods in Yu-shan. At least, as much as any minor terrestrial god.

The salt gods embraced their status with cooperation. Much as the lesser elemental dragons found themselves well suited for roles as censors due to not being so bound by their own natures, the nature of salt gods proved to have little influence over their lusts and proclivities. While in principle their purpose was to preserve salt in its natural, unextracted form, they were not just amenable but eager for payments to overlook their inherent nature. Throughout the First Age, the Solar Deliberative and Glimmering Nacal (in cooperation with his allies in the Bureau of Humanity) ensured that the salt gods were compensated for allowing humans to extract salt, and most salt gods could expect the mortals doing the extraction to provision them with prayer and offerings as well. This institutionalized system of bribery was considered entirely legal, for the Celestial Bureaucracy itself accepted that the role of salt gods and their purpose would not be matched. Some speak that this system of corruption, introduced to resolve a pressing issue, tainted the Celestial Bureaucracy and opened the door to many of its issues in the present-day.

The fall of the Solar Exalted in the Usurpation threw many institutions into chaos, and the Great Contagion and Balorian Crusade were equally disruptive. The gods administering payments to the salt gods redirected resources to their own designs, and those cut off were told that their work was valued, but they had means to seek their recompense directly... already practiced, many did so with gusto. In the conflict that bubbled up between celestial and terrestrial divinities, the salt gods were vocal proponents of terrestrial independence, and have never accepted Yu-shan's efforts to pull them back into its bureaucratic systems.

Through the years of the Shogunate, and into the present, many salt gods have established cults and alliances (such as that between the salt god of the Seeping Desert’s collusion with The Guild). On the Blessed Isle, the Scarlet Empress imposed the Salt Rate close to the start of her reign, but even this has begun to fray in her absence.

Salt Debate

In the doctrines of the Immaculate Order, there is great debate over the nature and role of the salt gods, as the Immaculate Texts provide no guidance on the specific nature of the gods, nor do they speak of the history behind them. Instead, Immaculate theologians have been left to debate on the salt gods and their place in the Perfected Hierarchy. The Salt Debate separated the practices of a number of Immaculate sects and temples throughout the years of the Shogunate, and meant the Order struggled to resolve relations with the salt gods in the wake of the Great Contagion, a key factor that moved the Scarlet Empress to declare the Salt Rate without religious consultations. Though the Rate resolved a number of practical matters, it did nothing to end the discussion within the Order, and the Salt Debate remains contentious to this day.

One side of the Salt Debate holds the salt gods exist to preserve salt in its natural state, and this is their proper role: to allow the gathering of salt is for them to succumb to corruption, and thus for mortals to USE salt was itself a violation of the Hierarchy and participation in corruption of the gods, as wrong as would be prayer outside the regulated Prayer Calendar. The other holds that the purpose of salt gods is to oversee the transformation of salt from natural state to pure state, for which they can be compensated by way of the Prayer Calendar and religious rituals preceding mortal efforts at salt extraction: when the salt gods refuse this duty or demand more than their due for it, they violate the Hierarchy.

The latter view is currently most prevalent within the Order, accepted by the Palace Sublime and expressed in the work of monks at the Temple of Salt, but the former is far from extinct: several temples more distant from the Blessed Isle, such as the Ivory Tower of Shuyun continue to embrace it, and even the current Paragon of Hesiesh has expressed support for the interpretation.