The Deva

The Deva of Southeast Asia
In the beginning was the question: what was earth and what was heaven? What was life, what death? What night, what day, what dark water, and what desirous heat? Who made creation, and how did it make itself? Which poet was the first to measure male from female, existence from nonexistence, meter from meter? When the powers came forward in this age’s dawn, who was first to declare, “You are an asura…but I am a Devá”?

The Devá’s temporal power exceeds any pantheon’s. They have amassed over a billion mortal followers among myriad faiths, a devastating panoply of artifacts including some of the most powerful divine superweapons ever imagined, and great diplomatic clout over many other religions and pantheons in and near the Indian subcontinent. Regardless of who you are or where you’re from, if you want to make your mark on the World, sooner or later you’ll have to deal with the Devá.

Principal Members
Devá number in the hundreds, the taxonomy of their names, Mantles, and avatars (also known as Incarnations) infinite and baroque. Poetry, song, and art widely depict each one, adorned with signature tools and weapons and riding a sacred mount.

The original Devá declared themselves a sort of noble caste of an older class of entities, the asuras, from whom they drifted further apart (sometimes violently) over the millennia. That first generation included Agni the sacrificial flame, Surya the sun, Yamaraja the king of death, their original chief Varuna the sea, and their later leader Indra the storm-hero. But the recent rise of Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Shaktism made Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Destroyer, and Durga the Mother of all feminine power even more influential than the Vedic generation. Shiva’s sons Ganesha the Lord of Obstacles and the General Karttikeya ascended from Scionhood to Godhood long ago.

Durga is the prime emanation of Shakti, the Primordial feminine power. She further subdivides into Lakshmi the goddess of fortune, Parvati the Goddess of love and devotion, Sarasvati the scholar-artist, and Kali. Shakti’s exponents can split and fuse with one another’s identities and Mantles with an ease that rivals the caminos of the Òrìshà.

Pantheon Path
Asset Skill: Athletic, Survival

Virtues: Conscience and Duty

After years struggling against the Kaurava family throughout Veda Vyasa’s epic Mahabharata, Prince Arjuna of the Pandava family regards the army arrayed against him on Kurukshetra Plain: his own relatives, manipulated into conflict by the evil and selfish Kaurava Prince Duryodhana, who will stop at nothing to fulfill his own destiny of death in battle. Arjuna knows in his heart that to war with his own relatives is wrong, so he throws down his sacred bow Gandiva and unburdens himself to his charioteer, Lord Krishna. Krishna responds, explaining in the context of divine truth Arjuna’s grisly duty as a knight, fulfilling his caste’s and his own destiny. This explanation, the “Bhagavad Gita” (“Song of the Lord”), defines many Hindu religions…and articulates a struggle Gods and mortals have always wrestled with: What happens when your heroic duty is to do a certain thing, but you’re pretty sure that thing is villainous? The Pandavas obey Krishna’s ruthless advice, stooping to treachery to take out King Karna and Prince Duryodhana. Yet Duryodhana still gets his knightly death in the end, even going to heaven and taunting the Pandavas from there.

A modern Scion will encounter similar situations, where their own conscience will conflict with the dictates of their religion or pantheon. Consider, for example, the bit of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which explains how to coerce a woman into sleeping with you — and recommends beating her with a stick if she’s uncooperative. Consider the caste system, which the Indian government has formally abolished but which is taking a very long time to disassemble in practice. Consider the entire Rama/Sita disaster. Consider any number of less charged but equally wretched situations, where you’ve promised or sworn or thought you’d do one thing but it seems like a terrible idea now that you’re faced with it. Will you adhere to the dictates of duty, fulfilling the destiny laid out for you? Or will you fly in the face of honor and fate, striking out on your own path even if your whole world will fall apart afterwards? Sometimes, the rules reward you for one thing even when another option seems like the right thing to do. You’re going to have to make a call.

Signature Purview: Yoga.

This pivotal religious practice is a set or system of activities which unmake attachment, ego, and desire and elevate the self unto the divine. Yoga’s ultimate reward is unity with the Godhead and escape from life, death, and rebirth. Some seekers practice karma yoga, the yoga of selfless action, purifying themselves of any hope of recouping their efforts’ fruits in order to help others more perfectly. Some practice jnana yoga, the yoga of selfless meditation, dissociating from their own minds’ depredations and the misery of pain, desire, and misfortune. Some practice bhākti yoga, the yoga of ecstatic love and devotion to God, expressed through art, sex, or weirder things. Some practice two or all three.

Cosmology
The Devá conceive of time in cycles of four epochs called “yugas.” During the 4,800-year-long Satya Yuga, first of the four, virtue abounds and humans have great stature and long lifespans. The successive three yugas —Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga — see mankind grow nastier, more brutish, and shorter. Currently we’re in a Kali Yuga, at the end of which the world will end and the cycle will begin anew.

Lokas
The Devá conceive of all existence as a towering stack of lokas (“planes” or “levels”), listed here from lowest to highest.

The lowest level, just above the primeval Garbhodaka Sea, is Naraka, King Yama’s abode and the site of myriad hells and other postmortem destinations. Above that are the Patala Underworlds: the Serpent Level, Rasatala, Mahatala, Talatala, Sutala, Vitala, and Atala. Our World, known as Pṛthvi, is above those, divided into the Bhu (earth) and Bhuvar (sky) Levels.

Above our world are the Svarga Levels: the Svarga Level, Mahar Level, Jana Level, Tapa Level, and Satya Level. The pinnacle is reserved for the greatest of the Gods, although depending on whom you ask, that could be pretty much anyone, so a number of penthouse levels including Lord Krishna’s Cow Level and Durga’s Mani Continent jostle one another for primacy up top.

Naraka
Yamaraja’s psychopomps and messengers escort dead souls to the Underworld. There, Yama or one of his nine subordinate judges assign the soul to a Svarga Level or to one of Naraka’s many hells for reward or punishment, after which the soul is reborn into the world. Naraka processes Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, traditional Chinese, and Shintō dead. Each type of soul has specific needs and expectations for their afterlife experience. Hindu souls undergo torments appropriate to their sins until they are purged and ready for rebirth. Buddhism doesn’t really deal in souls, but unspeakably bad people still wind up in the darkness beneath.

In addition to its many carefully tailored torments, Naraka also features a sprawling necropolis housing the monsters and spirits from four different pantheons who aid King Yama in his work. A handsome citadel functions as a hall of records, where Lord Chitragupta organizes, updates, and curates records of everyone who ever died or will die. Its demonic guards watch constantly for mortals or spirits (like, for example, certain Chinese simians) trying to break in and erase their names from the book of those who will die.

Mount Meru
The gigameter-tall, five-peaked mountain Meru is the center of the cosmos, the axis on which all the World turns. The top of this mountain is the Devá Level, abode of the primordial creator Brahma, while the terraces below host serpents, raptors, nature spirits, and dwarves. Meru is accessible via one of the many mythical locations where it has been sighted, including the cosmic ocean and the Pamir Mountains. Climbing Mount Meru is a task no mere mortal may attempt, requiring strength of both body and character — but reaching the top proves one worthy of Heaven.

Lanka
Rising from the sea 1,300 kilometers southwest of Kerala is Lanka, the devils’ island kingdom. The divine architect Vishvakarman originally constructed the island and the city thereupon, but three rakshasa brothers took it over. Over the centuries, it fell into different hands, always monstrous or demonic — most famously Ravana, the Demon King of Lanka. In the lead-up to the Battle of Lanka, Hanuman, son of the wind-God Vayu and avatar of Shiva, torched Ravana’s citadel; and Prince Rama, avatar of Vishnu, exploited a loophole in Ravana’s invulnerability to slay him. Lanka has remained rulerless since then. Most people assumed it had faded into obscurity.

In 2009, the Sri Lanka Navy rediscovered Lanka in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan Civil War, although the locals rebuffed their approach. The city of Lankapura had been rebuilt, covering early all the island. It’s not what it used to be, but that might not be a bad thing. Lanka is now an anarchic haven for monstrous humanoids. Most of its inhabitants are rakshasas, yakshas, and serpents, but during the past 100 years, monsters from all over the world have taken refuge in Lanka. Indian monsters rub shoulders with rusalkas, manananggals, trolls, and other international monsters with no place else that’s safe (“safe”) to go.

When they originally heard about Lanka, the Devá immediately organized a war party to head there and clean the place out, but they ran into, of all things, a protest on their way there. When Guanshiyin Pusa of the Shén personally interceded to beg for peace, mercy, and consideration of the possible international political fallout, they relented; so Lanka stays, for now. The question of who will rule Lanka remains. Its inhabitants rebuilt King Ravana’s golden palace in between the peaks of the Trikuta Mountains. Every few years a monstrous strongman sets themself up as King of Lanka, but the squabbling gangs who rule the warren of alleyways that makes up the city inevitably set aside their differences to throw that strongman out. But one day, Ravana may come again, or send one of his Scions. Rumor has it one of his daughters fought on the LTTE side in the Sri Lankan Civil War, but she hasn’t returned to the island. Perhaps the place is ripe for some Scion’s picking. Or for another Battle of Lanka.

Brahma The Creator
First of the Trimurti alongside Vishnu and Shiva is Brahma. Was he self-born, born of Vishnu’s navel, or born of Shiva and Parvati wound together? Was he Prajapati or Purusha? The lord of speech’s four faces’ four mouths spoke the Vedas into existence. His red skin contrasts with his white beard, white clothes, and white waterfowl mount. His four hands hold the Vedas, the ladle that feeds the sacrificial fire, the lotus, and the water source. He cares little for worship and receives little as well; only a handful of temples are dedicated to him. As a Buddhist guardian God, Brahma urged the Tathagata to share his enlightenment with the world. His lust and thirst for knowledge counterbalance his wife Sarasvati’s coolness and harmony.

Ravana The Demon King of Lanka
How the mighty have fallen.

Once, Lord Shiva rewarded the rakshasa Ravana, his most devoted worshipper, with a boon of invulnerability to anyone but a mortal. In his numberless hands Ravana could wield any weapon; in his 10 heads he held perfect knowledge of classics such as the Vedas. But legend holds that power corrupted Ravana, transforming him into an evil tyrant. He lusted after Prince Rama’s wife Sita, abducting her and precipitating the Battle of Lanka, which eventually got him killed at Rama’s hands.

…or so the popular story goes. Ravana has been dead a long time, but the burgeoning rakshasa welfare movement rallies around him as a martyr, citing little-known South Indian versions of the Ramayana which cast Ravana as a hero, clashing with the Northern and Southeast Asian versions. “Ravana reborn” is a common rallying cry for modern rakshasas, who maintain that a new Incarnation or scion (Scion?) of Ravana is on their way to lead them once again.

Purviews: Artistry or Epic Stamina, nobody’s quite sure which

Virtues: Dominance, Rapacity

Hinduism
Upwards of one billion mortals in the World adhere to one of the myriad faiths now collectively called Hinduism in English. Hinduism, an exonym with British origins reinforced by latter-day Hindu unitarian movements, encompasses a staggering diversity of religious traditions born in the South Asia of the World, including Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Shaktism. Indonesian Hinduism is also related to, but distinct from, South Asian Hinduism, emphasizing a single deity called Acintya whose Godhead encompasses the entire pantheon of the Devá (and boy, can it get weird when they all get invited to the same parties). Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalis, Sri Lankans, Indonesians, and Bangladeshis are wide-ranging peoples; affiliates of the Devá will find coreligionists in the United States, South Africa, England, and Southeast Asia. You might think of Hinduism’s different traditions or denominations as a cluster of different but related languages or dialects: While the languages might share vocabulary, grammatical patterns, script, or other important concepts with one another, each language is ultimately an independent entity, only partly intelligible with its neighbors. As such, describing the World’s Hinduism as a whole is a challenging matter, but the Hindu religions tend to emphasize prayer, devotion, religious art, and sometimes dietary restrictions such as vegetarianism or avoiding eating the flesh of certain animals, such as cows, which are sometimes considered sacred. A professional scholar-priest caste, the Brahmins, historically presided over the religion and important events such as animal sacrifice; but the religion also featured ascetics who would undergo punishing austerities in the wilderness.

Buddhism’s presence in the World also merits mention here. One of Vishnu’s best-known avatars was a Nepali prince, Siddhartha Gautama. He achieved enlightenment after a period of meditation and established a new religion based on moderation, compassion, and freedom from the suffering desire and attachment to the world cause. His religion emphasized nonviolence and decried the animal sacrifices that many Hindu religions had practiced since Purusha’s own sacrifice. Even before they realized the Buddha was an avatar of Vishnu (which Buddhists adamantly deny), many Devá were fascinated by the intellectual and spiritual challenge Buddhism posed to their way of life. Many Devá were present at the Buddha’s later sermons, such as the one delivered at Vulture Peak (recorded as the Lotus Sutra) which drew four percent of the entire World’s population. Even today, many Hindus (not to mention the Devás themselves) are mindful of the contrasting viewpoint Buddhism poses, creating a dialectic between Hindu and Buddhist perspectives.

Creatures/Followers
Animals:  Serpents, bears, monkeys, and raptors figure prominently in Indian myth. These entities display both human and bestial qualities in different places in the mythical canon. Serpents are sometime-antagonists, sometime-allies of humanity and the Devás. Monkeys are one of the monkey-like God Hanuman’s symbols; his followers the vanaras are sentient primates with both human and monkey characteristics. Sentient bears fought alongside them in the Battle of Lanka. The greatest of the raptors is the garuda, a mount of Krishna and a great enemy of serpents. You may represent these entities either as Legendary creatures, denizens, or as Followers depending on the form they take. You might also buy both Birthrights to depict creatures who can transform back and forth like fairytale animals.

Guides
Bodhisattva: Many Devá, regardless of their personal philosophies, are also interested in Buddhism; a Buddhist arhat or bodhisattva would make an appropriate teacher for a Devá affiliate with questions about philosophy or personal conduct. The Buddha, after all, was one of Vishnu’s avatars.

Preceptor Drona: South Asian culture puts great and specific emphasis on parampara, the lineage of gurus (teachers) and shishyas (students) in the arts or humanities. Even Godlike heroes might study with a mortal or immortal sage or instructor. Preceptor Drona, martial-arts master to the Kauravas and Pandavas, founded the city of Gurgaon in Haryana; his military academy may still be found there, a strange sight amidst the factories and office towers.

Relics
Astras: Devá epics describe some of the most devastating superweapons ever seen, designed to vaporize entire armies or nations in one strike. Most of these astras are missiles meant to be hurled or loosed from a bow. The traditional conventions of Indian warfare consider the use of such weapons against common soldiers (rather than rathis or Scions) to be a war crime, but who knows to what depths someone will stoop in this degenerate age?

Soma: Beloved of Indra, soma is a substance both drink and deity. Purchasing soma as a Relic gives you a leafy green plant which you can cultivate and milk, mixing its sap into the intoxicating concoction which confers divine vitality.

Relationships
Everyone who understands what the Devá’s apocalyptic superweapons are capable of fears them. An astra that misses its target, or strikes a target not “worthy” of its power, causes nuclear-scale collateral damage. Hypothetically, a divine weapon not of Indian origin — Mixcoatl, perhaps, or the Spear of Lugh — should be able to block or counter an astra in a worthy hero’s hands. No one has tested this hypothesis. No one wants to be the first.

The Titanomachy always has been the Devá’s first priority. The Devá’s foundation as a pantheon dates back to a schism between two divine factions, called Devás and Asuras in Sanskrit or Daevas and Ahuras in Avestan. These parties clashed over territory, religious practice, and ideology, with the Devá winding up on top in the Indian subcontinent and the Asuras in a stronger position in and around Iran. Each faction’s word for “Titan” is simply the other pantheon’s name. So Titanomachy is inseparable from the Devá’s identity as a pantheon. They exist because they oppose Asuras and their degenerate values. Abandoning the struggle against Asuras, a struggle at which they excel, would be tantamount to breaking up the band. Partisans at both pro- and anti-Titanomachy poles cite the Devá’s outspoken, hawkish belligerence as evidence for their own positions.

Other Pantheons
The Devá’s oldest enemies are the Yazatas. That war went cold a long time ago, as despite the Devá’s greater influence in the mortal world, all the other pantheons recognize the Yazatas as deities. Even the most aggressive Devá would never encourage their Indian followers to persecute the many Parsis who live there; there’s enough prejudice as is. Nevertheless, the Devá still think Yazatas are just jumped-up Titans, and they’ve made noises about how the Æsir, who harbor a proud jötunn, are probably Titans as well. Keeping Thor and Indra from running into and inevitably murdering one another is an important duty for both pantheons.

The Devá get along with other pantheons who share their aggressive attitude toward Titans, especially the Teōtl. The Theoi haven’t forgotten the time the Pandavas conquered Greece and Rome because they were bored, then left without bothering to administer an empire. The Devá’s patronizing encouragement toward them, as if they’re the kids from the wrong side of the tracks who somehow managed to make something of themselves, doesn’t help much.

Conversely, the Òrìshà and Loa are unfailingly polite to the Devá, yet vocally and vehemently oppose their attitude towards Titanomachy. They point to the Devá-Yazata conflict as the perfect example of a pantheon abusing the term “Titan” to slur their enemies. The Devá’s closest allies are their East Asian partners, the Shén of China and the Kami of Japan. Originally, shared interest in Buddhism and geographic proximity brought them together.Principals from these pantheons frequently visit or even Mantle into one another; Yamaraja, for example, operates Hell for all three pantheons. These groups know how to operate in large, messy families, confusing bureaucracies, and systems of regional devotion where different areas of the same country may emphasize different parts of the pantheon or the religion.

Greatest Weakness
The Devá’s strong position makes them a really big target. As overseers of the largest religion of any pantheon, and holders of the most terrifying arsenal in all the history of the World, the Devá are the most obvious enemies for Titans with nothing to lose who want to prove themselves against someone who looks huge and oppressive. The Devá’s attitude towards such threats is and has always been “come at us, bro,” which may or may not work out for you as one of their Scions who’s probably gonna be on the front lines.