City God
Creation is maintained by the constant work of the spirits who make up the Celestial Bureaucracy, each concept and each instance overseen by a divine force from the great Yo Ping who oversees the idea of ‘Peace’ to the Least God of the smallest grain of sand. Within this context, a metropolitan settlement requires its own divine oversight. A City God is quite simply the god responsible for this, the god of a city. For each city, there is a Terrestrial Court of associated divinities, and the god of that city is also head of this court, in similar fashion to the courts of mountains and forests.
But a ‘city’ is a different concept from many others, its metaphysical underpinnings of greater significance. The Primordials forged Creation, constructed the great structures of Meru and the Blessed Isle, and then from it raised the Eperpopolis of Heaven, setting a pattern repeated to this day. Creation births families, tribes, communities, and these grow to become cities. Nations and empires may rule over many cities, but the primacy of the urban center in cosmology and geomancy is undeniable, their very nature serving to concentrate and intensify prayer towards their god and Heaven beyond, while their god’s oversight of the city as a whole allows them to redistribute prayer offered up to the city or passed down from the Celestial Court to those gods whose roles are vital but whose names rarely pass through mortal lips.
There are many terms for gods of cities: City God, City Father, City Mother, Oppidan, Patron God, et cetera. Many in Creation use the terms interchangeably, but in reality they are much more clearly differentiated.
Oppidans
The god many (the Bureau of Humanity in particular) would consider to be a ‘true’ city god is known as an Oppidan, though they most often take the title of City Father or City Mother. These gods tend to originate with the tribe or settlement around which a city grows, though this is not always the case: sometimes a god’s tribe might settle and a new City Father burst full-formed into existence to oversee it while the old god continues to submit the tribal paperwork. Regardless of their status born or raised, Oppidans have a nature different from many gods with ostensibly Terrestrial purviews, receiving a desk in the Bureau of Humanity’s Hall of Gracious Superintendence. This privilege, which bears with it the right to enter the Celestial City regardless of the size of a god’s city purview, allows Oppidans to barter Heavenly connections with the Terrestrial gods in their regions in order to serve the interests of their cities.
While corruption mars these relationships, these were originally an intended function of the Celestial Bureaucracy: city gods were prime in their regions, overseeing the panoply of local gods whose domains touched upon their settlement, as the Unconquered Sun was prime over the Celestial Bureaucracy, panoply of all Creation. There is a noticeable trend for Oppidans to be masculine in nature, City Fathers rather than Mothers, which some muse is a metaphysical reflection of Sol Invictus’ own nature and dominance over the gods... though some note that City Mothers have become far more common in the Age of Sorrows, the meaning of this shift (if true) remains unknown.
Oppidans are tied to their cities more intimately than other deities... theirs is not a post from which there is simple promotion or dismissal, though they might take up other duties as well. Their bond to their cities affects them greatly not merely in power but in personality: the god of a growing city will be filled with ambition, the god of faltering one cautious, the god of a ruined one likely driven mad. Their existence is deeply connected to their city as well: the Oppidan of a city that has been destroyed persists as its god while ruins still exist, while the memory of it remains, even if their minds are broken and their natures transformed.
This is the reason Oppidans are destroyed more often than other deities of their power: it is not merely a matter of finding a new city for an unemployed city god, the loss of purview has brought inherent chaos to its being. While some can overcome it (most often those who also hold a differing purview), many fall into the madness, invariably committing offenses against the laws of Heaven for which the Censors must hold them to account. Once an Oppidan is removed, no new god emerges to replace them, their desk will remain unattended and their city unsettled until an existing god is positioned to replace them.
The strange nature of Oppidans has led some divine savants to consider them, along with other unusual divinities such as the Yuanzhang of the Constellations, to be amongst the oldest types of spirit devised by the Primordials, before the pattern of gods was set, perhaps even before the design of the Incarnae themselves. More esoteric theories have also been posited, such as the concept the Oppidan are in some ways ‘elementals’ of an urban pseudo-Element, or the Metropolitan Motonic Molarity Maximization Method devised towards the end of the Golden Age.
Oppidans are gods of specific settlements in Creation, which would normally mark them as Terrestrial divinities, but the primacy of cities can be seen in the fact that for each city there is a desk in Yu Shan (though most are paltry indeed). Some (the Bureau of Humanity most firmly) hold that this makes all city gods members of the Celestial Court. Indeed, the city gods have access to Heaven in the same manner as other Celestial divinities, even though often their dwellings amount to little more than the space beneath their desks.
Patrons
While for every city there is or was an Oppidan, there have also always been city gods known as Patrons. These are divinities (or, on rarer occasions, elementals and possibly even stranger beings) who take up the purview of a city which lacks an Oppidan. In principle, such gods were appointed by the Bureau of Humanity when positions opened or when an exception was invoked (such as placing the Unconquered Sun as patron god of Ondar Shambal), but while city gods are considered part of that Bureau it does not have exclusive powers to appoint… any could begin to gather worship as the god of a city and submit its paperwork to Heaven. Particularly in the dark times of the Age of Sorrows, with many city god desks left vacant in the culling of Oppidans required after the Great Contagion, this has become all too common.
The patron god of a city is a city god, as much as a City Father, but is not an Oppidan: its purview and its nature do not become entwined to the extremes seen in those spirits, instead functioning much as any other post or responsibility assigned within the Celestial Bureaucracy. As purviews go, cities are much-sought, for they grant a god significant power over the local gods in the region as well as concentrating prayer towards the city god. As city gods have some power over the consecration (or denial of such) of temples within their domains, even greater Celestial gods can be required to negotiate or tithe to a city god so their cults in the metropolis might deliver proper prayer and sacrifice. They also create a closer bond with worshippers than a more abstract purview, granting the god mortal agents and functionaries to pursue its rivalries and schemes in Creation.
Warrants
In previous millennia, the number of exceptions authorized by the Bureau of Humanity to allow a god to replace an Oppidan was relatively low, and opportunities for gods to take control of cities illegitimately were fewer due to the watchful eye of both the Solar Deliberative and the Censors. However, as the First Age wore on, Solar Exalts began to see advantage in placing gods of their own selection in charge of the municipalities under their control, because an alliance with a god could provide mutual advantage or because specific gods could be chosen and altered to fit the needs of the city, as seen with the three city gods of Gethamane. In that case and others such as that of Ondar Shambal, the Bureau of Humanity (oft begrudgingly) acquiesced to Exalted demands and gave those gods official status, though this was always done on a singular basis rather than as part of an overarching policy. Then and through the Shogunate Era the Bureau considered the vast majority of patron gods to be usurpers, criminals, even as their numbers grew (the fractuous politics of the time could be as dangerous for minor and middling Oppidans as to Dragonblooded Daimyo, alliances between rulers and gods being typical, and purges for a conqueror’s own divine allies far from uncommon). But eventually, between departure of many gods to other Bureaus and the loss of numerous Oppidans to madness in the Great Contagion, the Bureau of Humanity had to shift its position in order to restore its ranks.
The system of warrants is a bureaucratic system for licensing patron gods of cities, awarding them the city desk in the Bureau of Heaven. To major gods, this legitimizes their claim to a city (if still not their direct rule there), removing a potential crime which rivals could exploit. To a minor one, this is an even greater boon, for an office in Heaven is a source of valuable access and prestige. For its part, the Bureau of Heaven incorporates gods into its systems of administration to ensure things still run smoothly, pocketing standard prayer tithes and fees from municipalities that might otherwise grant them nothing, while giving patron gods reason to defend their Bureau against the predations of Ryzala’s Bureau of Heaven. To those officials who issue the warrants, there is personal advantage as well, for such official documents are oft granted after the receipt of many gifts.
To issue a warrant requires majority approval of the Bureau’s Chief Executive, the Department of Human Habitations’ Director, and the Directional Satrap. As Wun Ja holds two of those posts, it is she who controls warrants directly, and who receives the bulk of what is offered in exchange.
Custodial Receivers
When divine law is broken, it falls to the Ministry of Celestial Censors in the Division of Divine Order to mete out justice. However, the removal of a city god is a thing of consequence: the separation of an Oppidan is severe, and assuring city paperwork continues on properly is key. Thus, when the Censors must remove a city god, they will typically put in place one of their deputies (typically Lion Dogs) as a ‘Custodial Receiver’. This Receiver temporarily manages the city in question, ensuring local gods continue their tasks and prayer is directed as it should be… in principle, they do so until the guilty god can return or a replacement is appointed, but in this fallen Age it is far from unknown for Receivers to exploit their position, extending it indefinitely and growing fat on the benefits accorded the god of a city (and presenting a cut to their Censor for the privilege). The Censor Aligept is particularly adept at such manipulations.
Missing City Gods
The absence of a City god has significant ramifications for a city, and for Creation surrounding it. While the dangerous encroachment of the Wyld at Creation’s edges appears a more overt threat, the breakdown of cities provides another avenue through which chaos seeks to spill into the world. In the absence of a city god of one sort or another, vital paperwork for the Celestial Bureaucracy goes untended, minor gods of the city’s Terrestrial Court find themselves suddenly without guidance or resources, their squabbles disrupting the steady function of a city. As the city sits longer without a god, its clustered threads in the Loom of Fate begin to fray, as the urban landscape becomes increasingly disconnected from Creation, eventually opening gaps through which the Wyld can come bubbling through. The gods of Heaven and monks of the Immaculate Order both know of this, a reason why the corruption of city gods oft seems allowed to reach great (and very visible) heights without the retaliation of Censors or the Wyld Hunt, and why Wun Ja does not turn her entire Bureau to the destruction of those gods who have illegally snatched the purviews of her subordinates. The Fair Folk also sense this, and the gods of cities are targets for destruction or corruption whenever opportunity presents.
