Mesopotamian Pantheon

### Known Aliases

The Anunnaki, The Igigi, Mesopotamian Deities, Sumerian Deities, Akkadian Deities, Assyrian Deities, Babylonian Deities, Gods of Ancient Mesopotamia
- - - - -
The Michaelim, Children of Michael, Progenies of He Who Is Like God

### Identity

Public Identity
(Believed to be Mythical by Most Persons)

## Membership

### Leader(s)

Michael (as Anu) (Original Godhead)
Marduk (Current Godhead)

### Current Members

Ashar, Bau, Enki, Enlil, Ereshkigal, Gula, Ishkur, Ishtar, Ishtaran, Kishar, Marduk, Nabu, Nanaya, Nanshe, Nergal, Ninhursag, Ninlil, Ninshubur, Ninurta, Nisaba, Shamash, Su'en, Tammuz, Zababa...

## Summary

The Anunna are one of the oldest and proudest pantheons. While, technically, "Anunna" originally referred to only to the direct children of Anu, and the other gods were once called Igigi, they have long ceased to care about specific names, so long as they all agree on the important things: The Anunna are in charge, and humanity exists to serve them and the world.

The gods must be good rulers as their duty and humans must be good servants as theirs. Their cities may have fallen, their land may be lost, but the Anunna endure. Loss is a failure on the part of their humans to live up to expectations. The Anunna are proud, and they know that they are still the greatest of gods. Their circumstances are temporary — they will regain the glories of old.

There is no room for argument.

## Principal Members

The Anunna are a pantheon of rulers and nobles. Almost all descended, somehow, from Anu, the ethereal Incarnation of the Aeonic Michael, so they are also a family. They operate in firm hierarchies, with the greater gods in charge of the lesser ones, and humans below them, living as servants and caretakers of the world. Humans exist for their benefit and the gods rule them as generous lords. They are concerned, above all, with keeping order and reclaiming the glory that their past humans managed to lose.

## Cosmology: Bābilim Kosmos

The otherworldly realms of the Anunna are some of the oldest in existence, unchanged and unchanging in millennia. While all pantheons, to some extent, cling to the traditions and ways of the heyday of their power, nowhere is this more true than among the Mesopotamian gods. To step into their magical realms is to leave the modern day far behind and enter a world wherein little, if anything, has changed since the dawn of civilization.

### Shamamu

*For detailed information: Shamamu*

The sky is a dome, or rather, three domes, only one of which mortals can see. This least dome, made of jasper, is the abode of the stars. Though largely uninhabited, this dome is critical to priests and kings, for the gods revealed their will through the natural world, and the movement of the stars was one of their greatest tools. Above the lowest dome is another of blue stone, where dwell the demigods and lesser deities of the pantheon. Above that is a dome of red stone where dwells the greatest of the gods, named the Palace of Anu after their empyreal forefather. Here, the Anunna rest upon lapis lazuli thrones in palaces that rise above the celestial oceans, looking out over all those who pray to them — for though a mortal may never enter the heavens, the images of all who seek a god’s favor (particularly in the presence of their idols) stand before the god’s court to be judged.

### Irkalla

*For detailed information: Irkalla*

The Underworld is a dark and unpleasant place, where the only food and drink is dry dust. To enter, one must cross the desert, find passage across the River Hubur, and enter the Land of Kur. There, one passes through seven gates, guarded by Neti, offering up clothing and fineries to pay the toll until one stands naked before Ereshkigal in her private abode named Ganzir. There, she pronounces the deceased dead, and their names are recorded by the divine scribe Geshtinanna. For the dead, there is little respite - kings and laborers alike are equal before the Great Lady of the Earth, save in one respect: How they are remembered by the living. Faithful descendants will pour libations into the graves of the deceased to allow them to slake their thirst, and those who could afford it would hire musicians to further alleviate the drab conditions of Irkalla.

Irkalla is also home to the Gallû, fearsome gods who pursue those who attempt to escape and drag them back to the Underworld. Sometimes, they climbed to the surface to torment the living or to drag them to the Underworld before their time on Ereshkigal's orders. Despite this, the Gallû are not inherently evil — rather, they are evil because that is their purpose, as given by Enlil. They faithfully labor to carry out his judgment but are not above looking the other way given a good enough reason. The one thing they will absolutely not abide by is a change in Irkalla’s headcount, so anyone who wants to leave needs to have someone ready to take their place, and even getting the Gallû to agree to this kind of scam is not easy.

## Trivia and Notes

### Trivia

#### General

* The Anunna smells like cedar trees and baking clays; accompanied by the sound of a bustling and crowded market.
* The Anunna were once the patrons of empires that dominated one of the great cradles of life, admired and feared throughout the world. That was a long time ago, and the fortunes of their faithful have fallen far. At first, the Anunna left their mortal followers to follow their own devices. They had fallen far before and had always risen back up. Indeed, they did, but in the process, many sought out new gods, new ways of building cities and societies. For centuries, the Anunna were all but forgotten in the Mortal World, their works and faith preserved by a few secret cults and by those few cities hidden in Terrae Incognitae.
* The Anunna are emerging from what seemed like quiescence but what was in truth an almost pathological degree of patience, now strained almost to its limit. In classic fashion, they are not known for restraint, and now that they are acting, the world is being reminded of both their power and their refusal to brook disobedience. That they yet now withhold punishment (or, if Enlil has his way, near-annihilation) is, to them, a mark of benevolence — to others, however, it reads as weakness. Few yet wish to test the issue, regardless, just in case.
* The Anunna's greatest stroke in the modern world was inspiring the development of the science of Assyriology, which studies all of ancient Mesopotamia and not merely ancient Assyria as the name might imply. Through this vector, their names and works have become known to new generations, driving mortals once more into the waiting arms of their secret cults. Ishtar and Ereshkigal, in particular, have enjoyed newfound popularity after becoming symbols of sacred femininity in wiccan and neopagan religions.
* The Anunna's greatest difficulty is the present libertine ethic of much of mortal culture, and a preoccupation with what the Anunna see as inverting the traditional hierarchy of ruler and subject. In fact, now few of the Anunna's own Scions conflict with their divine parents on this point. The Anunna struggle to reconcile this with their hallmark absolutist authority, and for the time being, can at best rely on providing benefits to mortal followers while reminding them of their place in the celestial order.
* If the Anunna have a weakness, and they would certainly not admit such, it is that they are too sure of themselves, too proud and unwilling to brook disagreement, too ready to discount others' ideas or opinions. This has, on more than one occasion, divorced them entirely from reality. To hear the Anunna talk, the whole of the world is a part of their engine of creation, and never mind that the vast majority of humans, who they claim to have made for the sole purpose of worshiping them and maintaining the world for them, are doing neither of those things. Attempts to challenge that worldview rarely end with a happy god, regardless of how necessary it might be.

#### Anunna's Scions

* Scions of the Anunna are as much a part of the modern world as any other pantheon's children, and as such, they are occasionally difficult for their divine parents to understand. Noble, regal, and ever-ready to enter battle for a good cause, they straddle the worlds of the incredibly ancient and the fresh and new in a way that aids the gods substantially in their struggle against forces of evil. The gods themselves are trying their best to learn the rules of this new world quickly, and soon, there will be no question that their Scions are every bit as effective as those of other pantheons.
* The Anunna were intimately connected with the cities they were worshiped in, where they served as direct patrons to leaders and other important figures. Avatars appeared frequently, perhaps more often than anywhere else in the world at any point in time. Their Scions frequently inherit their divine parents' covenants but are just as likely to form covenants that are theirs, absent their parents' own. Rare is the Anunna's Scion who doesn't have a tie to some kind of community. Scions of the Annuna often have a following formed around them - a cult, most likely - as they serve as intermediaries between their divine parents and the world. In addition, such cults will be much more likely to seek direct orders from the Scion, expecting them to play a central role in their civic organization and operation.
	+ Even if they don’t make an effort to set up such a cult, more often than not, they’re likely to develop them anyway through pure divine inertia much faster than Scions from other pantheons would be able to.
* The skills most valuable to the Anunna's Scions are Culture and Leadership.
* An Anunna's Scion has to balance the Virtues of *Authority* and *Benefice*.
	+ The Anunna are said to be good to their faithful, not because they have to be, or because the relationship is somehow reciprocal, but because the Anunna have accepted it as appropriate for the sovereigns of the cosmos.; they offer Benefice because they have decided that it is right to do so. They do not seek to lift up those beneath them, for nothing will elevate humans to the level of the gods. They act with the obligations that come from being a superior, noble being. Conversely, the Annuna expect unswerving obedience from those below them, and this applies to lesser gods as well as mortals and their half-divine children. The closer one is to Anu, the more Authority one has, and that Authority is always absolute, and from this absolutist structure of Authority arises harmony, or at least, the Annuna's conception of it.

#### Relationships

* In the view of the Anunna, the other pantheons are upstarts, little godlings who invariably descend from some of the Anunna's forgotten trysts, and therefore, owe their loyalty and obedience to the Mesopotamian gods. Needless to say, other pantheons do not subscribe to this view of affairs. Because the Anunna are unwilling (or unable) to step down from the pedestal on which they’ve placed themselves, their relationships with other pantheons are therefore universally strained at best.
* The Netjer are the only pantheon the Anunna might truly term their rival, though they would never admit to such a thing where anyone could hear them. They respect the Egyptian gods' intelligence and their ability to remain part of the world long after it had no further use for them, but even so, they still make mistakes. The Netjer are perhaps the pantheon who remember the Mesopotamian gods the most clearly, and, as a result, they are often staunch allies, reminding the other pantheons that their might should not be discounted.
* The Anunna nurture a certain fondness for the Theoi, who they see as fractious western neighbors. They see much of themselves in the Graeco-Roman deities, their flamboyant stories and their lust for life. They are generally happy to interact with them, though the Theoi, who are used to viewing themselves as the preeminent power in the world, find their superior attitude grating and often avoid them or even start minor scuffles.
* The Anunna consider they "bequeathed" control of their kingdoms and people to the young Yazata when they departed the world, and, as a result, are quite friendly with them (if a little domineering). The Yazata find their antics suspiciously selfish at times, but their help is welcome in the fight against evil.
* Though the Devá are not much younger compared to the Anunna, the Mesopotamian gods still find the Hindu gods "impressively mature" for their age, much to the Hindu gods' annoyance. Most Anunna are uninterested in more complex theories and ideas; after all, they enjoy the pleasures the life to their fullest, and it is difficult to meaningfully interact with those who believe such pleasures to be a hindrance rather than a gift.
* The alien Kami are fascinating to the more cosmopolitan of the Anunna, who find their highly ritualized worship and laws to mirror their own. While they never interacted in their heyday, their mutual emphasis on the rule of the law makes them easy allies to cooperate with.
* While the Anunna respect the dedication of the Shén to the eradication of chaos, the Anunna tend to have little use for their overcomplicated system of government and have been known to end disputes over red tape by simply slicing through it. They might make good allies in the future, but one or both pantheons would have to grow more tolerant of alternative modes of operation, and both are set in their ways and unlikely to volunteer first.

### Notes

* "Anunna" means "princely offspring" or "offspring of An/Anu".