Korg

## Description

Korg is the god of survival, and storms. He is associated most with apex predators, storms both natural and magical, and survival of the fittest.

## History

When Amarinthinos breathed life into the first creatures in the newly created world, something noticed. This thing, which had chased the storms around the primordial chaos everything had been created from, and then throughout the new elemental planes as they were created stopped to investigate this new material realm. As a creature of the immaterial, like all other gods, it didn’t step foot on this alien realm, but it watched as creatures lived and died, some braving the storms much like those it chased throughout the multiverse to find food, while others cowered in caves or under trees to escape their wrath.

   As it watched with fascination, the being began to take on attributes recognizable to this material realm, becoming more like the creatures that thrived best in the world, at least those not yet claimed by another god, such as Xandrelith’s dragons or Amarinthinos’ children. It chose the beasts of the world: wolves, lions, bears, birds, among others. To some, it gave its blessings, allowing them to harness the powers of wind and lightning, but it found that if given to the wrong creatures, it would upset the delicate balance of power in the area. When Civilization sprung up, it happened again, wherever civilization went, the balance of nature was destroyed. Things that should have been able to survive could no longer, and Korg, as the being became called since it was a name easily pronounced by most creatures, was angered. Now Korg was not alone in his earliest days. While he hungrily chased the storms of chaos, he had known of another that sought the calmness that could be found in the multiverse. This other being like him had settled among the lower planes, a place devoid of life and sound, but one of solitude and stillness. Korg approached the other, and as he told this other of the things he saw on the material, the other being too, took on recognizable characteristics. In the way that Korg was a beast of life, his brother would be a creature of death. Together they married the two concepts, a kind of life that would cause death, and one that disproportionately harm civilization, as well as a kind of death that could create life and one that would make it hard for civilization to spread. Thus Korg and his brother unleashed these two creations onto the world, introducing it to both disease and desertification.

   Korg realized both the shortsightedness of his plans and the treachery of his brother almost immediately. While both creations certainly culled the existing civilizations, reducing the populations of cities precipitously, both civilization and disease began to rapidly adapt. The various kinds of diseases in the world rapidly multiplied and began affecting not just the civilized creatures, but the beasts and birds Korg called his own. Civilization began to find water in the deserts, and started to flourish once more, and they even began expanding without Korg’s oversight. Infuriated, Korg charged back down to his brother’s lair, in a pocket of stillness in Pandemonium, still close to the primordial energies of creation but one that was also still and devoid of the roiling, loud and tumultuous eddies that Korg once chased and confronted his brother. In the ensuing battle, Korg cursed the entire plane, bringing about a massive storm that whips through the entire plane, storms finding their way even through solid rock to ensure that no place on the plane would be still. When Korg finally limped back out of the lower planes, he found something odd. Many of the civilized people that he had fought against and killed many of, now venerated him as a god. Now that they had suffered through many of the same trials, and because they were far less egregious than the previous civilizations, Korg lent his aid to them as well, working to help the survival of all creatures after having accidentally unbalanced the ecosystems. Over time, he’s learned much, gaining great wisdom and humility from his previous mistakes, even if they were thousands of years ago.

## Worship and Rituals

Worship of Korg is primarily marked with short prayers in the morning, at night, and after a successful hunt, but Korg has shown his worshippers that he cares more for deeds than words, hunts, battles and tests of endurance in the god’s name carry far more weight than the short, almost phrase like prayers uttered during a normal day.

Storms are a special time for Korg’s Faithful, during a thunderstorm, Korg’s worshippers head out into the open, ensuring that they aren’t the tallest thing in the area and watch the storms, some of his more faithful chase storms, following the wind and thunder as the storm travels, until it dissipates or leaves them behind. Korg’s clerics use stormy skies to divine the future, and rainwater, is considered pure by his church, and is used to heal wounds and treat diseases.

Korg’s church finds few things heretical. Trophy hunting, or other reasons of killing creatures in excess and not for the purposes of fending off a threat or killing to eat is considered a sin, but the ultimate sin in the eyes of the church is suicide. Not only is suicide spitting in the face of the idea of survival, it’s also seen as repeating the shortsighted mistakes of Korg in the past, and is seen on equal level of the creation of disease in from a moral standpoint.