Katharsos

In the beginning, the Universe was filled with nothing Architect's cold and lonely presence and lifeless dust; there were no souls. That changed when the great god finally decided to open a rift. He closed the floodgate after a few seconds, of course, but in that time an unimaginable number of souls flooded in from beyond. Most were mere fragments, weak and broken things, but a few remained intact and were made into gods. Katharsos was one of these.

He manifested as a colossal head of fire, for he clutched onto faint memories of an existence of some flame spirit in a past life. The visage of his head twists with the flames, but it is usually bestial and never anything human. The heat and light that radiates from his form is very real, but the flames of his body are not mundane fire. They are unquenchable, burning on without air or fuel and even when submerged. As the god's temper changes, the color of the flames can take on a comforting orange glow, a soft red, a raging white and blue, or even a sickly green or purple.

Despite this vestigial appearance, Katharsos cares little about his past and instead chooses to fixate upon the future. Though associated with fire, he does not lord over it, instead taking Death for a Portfolio. As he interprets it, his soul is to care for all the Universe's souls, like a shepherd watches his herds, or perhaps more accurately like a forester cultivates and prunes his woods. Loose souls of the recently departed must be collected lest they crowd the Spheres and cause trouble to the living, and fresh new souls must always be in abundance so that life may go on. Katharsos' Portfolio of Death mainly pertains to souls of the dead and their ultimate fate; murder and the process of dying are beyond the scope of his realm, though he certainly could separate a soul from a living being and prematurely cause death if he willed it.

This came to be as a result of his first moment in the new Universe being not one of wonder, but rather of horror and panic. Whilst the other gods reveled in their own existence, or stared at the Architect in awe, or gawked at one another, or looked down to the empty canvas before them with ambition or yearning, Katharsos saw only the current of untold billions of broken souls that had been swept into this new Universe besides him. He saw their potential, but wept for their pitiful state and vowed to take good care of them. Perhaps the Architect planted this seed into Katharsos' mind, but it has never felt anything but natural to him.

Katharsos views mundane flame as a somewhat base, entropic, and crude thing, but a magical fire's purifying properties nonetheless make it a useful tool. Thus he works strange magics upon souls by conjuring what others see and name 'flames' even if they are truly more like the strange stuff that composes his body.

He prefers to do all of this from his Sphere, a celestial plane called the Sky of Pyres. It exists as one of the outermost Spheres, high, high above Galbar's surface. His realm is a largely empty one, devoid of much save for great clouds of sickly smoke and gigantic braziers where he lights the astral fires which incinerate souls that the ashes can be recovered and recycled. There are a great many souls, and they can sometimes take quite some time to burn, so he has countless of these massive braziers drifting through the space of his Sphere, wrapping all the way around Galbar's night sky. When mortals on Galbar look up and behold the glory and light of the stars, the souls of great people are witnessed as the light of the brightest of these infernos. Katharsos plans to connect the Sky of Pyres to Galbar through a massive invisible gateway called the Vortex of Souls, an ethereal maelstrom that tugs at all loose souls with an ultimately irresistible pull.

The Sky of Pyres, despite all Katharsos' efforts, is a grim place with an aura that most gods do not enjoy. The vast nebulae of smoke are a byproduct of the Braziers and the burning of souls, and they carry a horrific reek as well as a negative energy that can sicken anything living that somehow comes to visit the Sphere of Death.

## Death's Persona

Katharsos is often demonized, but he knows deep down that his work is just and necessary. Leaves will fall from trees come autumn, but then they must rot and be recycled once more into the earth, or eventually the whole forest will die; there is only a finite amount of nutrients in the soil, and it cannot all be sequestered into dead leaves. Something must combat the ruinous entropy.

The others might understand him better if he spoke with them, but he sees it as ultimately somewhat futile. Regardless of what they think, his work must go on. He would like to know them more, but he can justify being distant because he believes that one day they will all finally meet him--when their souls come to the Sky of Pyres. And then as their souls are burnt so that another god can be born from the ashes, he will witness each of their memories and come to know them perfectly. He looks forward to those times with both yearning and dread, but never with denial, for his mind is cursed with a lucidity that clings to him like the scent of smoke.

## References

1. ↑ Original CS https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4828223
2. ↑ 2. First IC appearance https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4836391