Light without shadow is blindness. Shadow without light is blindness. They do not oppose each other. They require each other.
Joint inscription above the entrance to the Temple of Revelation, attributed to neither twin specifically
Joasri and Nikolai are twins - created together by El Anon to steward light and shadow in a world that requires both. They are the most frequently misunderstood deities in the pantheon, because the instinct to map them onto good and evil is almost irresistible and almost entirely wrong. Nikolai is not good. Joasri is not evil. Light is not always kind, and shadow is not always threatening. The twins themselves find the mischaracterization tiresome and have spent considerable divine energy trying to correct it, with limited success.1
Joasri
Without shadow, there is nowhere to rest. Without darkness, there is nowhere to hide what is precious. Without secrets, there is no such thing as trust.
Attributed to Joasri directly, source unknown
Characteristics
Joasri is the god of shadow, darkness, and secrets - not because these things are bad, but because they are necessary. Privacy is a shadow. Rest is a shadow. The space between a thought and its expression is a shadow. Joasri governs all of it, and he takes his work seriously in the way that someone takes work seriously when they know it is underappreciated.2
He is precise, careful, and exceptionally patient. He does not act without knowing exactly what he is acting on, which is fitting for a god of secrets. He knows things that he does not share, which some find unsettling. His followers find it appropriate - not everything that exists in shadow needs to be brought into light.
Personification
Joasri appears as a lean, dark-haired figure who is somehow always slightly difficult to look at directly - not threatening, just perpetually at the edge of clear perception. He is described as being at ease in darkness in the way that Norvus is at ease outdoors, which is to say completely and without effort. Those who have encountered him describe the experience as being noticed by someone who sees considerably more than they are letting on.3
Powers
Joasri's power is that of shadow, concealment, and secrets4. He can move through darkness without detection, perceive anything occurring in shadow or darkness anywhere within his awareness, conceal people or objects from perception, and - most significantly - knows secrets. Not all secrets, but secrets that have been deliberately hidden in shadow, physical or metaphorical. He cannot compel secrets to be told. He can simply know them.5
Followers and Clerics of Joasri
Joasri's followers include scouts, spies, those who work in intelligence and investigation, those who keep secrets professionally, and those who simply understand that privacy is sacred. His faith is one of the least publicly visible on Nor'Ova - deliberately so - which makes estimating his following difficult. His priests are similarly discreet about their calling.6
Priests of Joasri can move without detection in shadow or darkness, add their Stealth to checks involving secrets, investigation, and concealment, and can detect deliberate lies with a successful check. They can also create areas of darkness that magical light cannot penetrate, within limits. Their most significant ability is the capacity to extract secrets from shadow - to perceive what has been deliberately hidden in a space, including conversations that occurred there recently.7
Nikolai
I do not bring light to comfort you. I bring it so you can see. What you do with what you see is your own concern entirely.
Attributed to Nikolai directly, source unknown
Characteristics
Nikolai is the god of light, revelation, and truth. Truth, as anyone who has ever received it unwanted can attest, is not always kind. Nikolai does not soften what he illuminates. He does not consider whether a revelation is welcome before making it. He is not cruel - he is simply committed to the position that what is true is true, and that hiding it does more harm than showing it.8
He is warm in the way that sunlight is warm - genuinely, physically beneficial, and occasionally too much. His followers tend to be earnest, forthright, and occasionally exhausting to people who were hoping for a comfortable ambiguity that Nikolai will not provide.
Personification
Nikolai appears as a bright-haired figure of obvious vitality, who gives the impression of being slightly too present - as though he is paying more attention to you than you were prepared for. He is described as impossible to lie to, not because he can detect lies in the way Joasri can detect secrets, but because something about his attention makes it seem pointless to try.9
Powers
Nikolai's power is that of light, truth, and revelation. He can illuminate anything - physically, metaphorically, or both simultaneously10. He can perceive truth in the way Joasri perceives secrets: not all truths, but truths that have been obscured or denied. He can create light that penetrates magical darkness, dispel illusions and concealments, and in significant exercises of his power, compel truth-telling - though he uses this last ability rarely, finding compelled truth less interesting than chosen truth.11
Followers and Clerics of Nikolai
Nikolai's followers include scholars, artists, healers, those who work with knowledge and its dissemination, and those who are committed to honesty in the way that makes other people slightly uncomfortable at dinner. His faith is considerably more publicly visible than Joasri's, which Joasri considers appropriate given the difference in their domains.12
Priests of Nikolai can detect lies automatically in conversation. They can create and sustain light in any form, including forms that penetrate magical darkness. They add their Insight to checks involving truth, scholarship, investigation, and the dispelling of illusions. They receive a bonus to Perceive checks in darkness, as though they carry light even when they do not.13
The Twins Together
Joasri and Nikolai are complements rather than opposites - a distinction that takes on theological importance when you understand that neither of them thinks the other is wrong, exactly. Joasri believes some things belong in shadow. Nikolai believes truth should be available. They have apparently negotiated the space between these positions for as long as they have existed, and the world continues to contain both shadow and light, which most scholars take as evidence that the negotiation is ongoing and neither is winning decisively.14
Temples dedicated to both twins together exist in several major cities - typically built so that one half of the structure is in natural shadow while the other receives full light, connected by a threshold that worshipers cross depending on which twin they are approaching. These joint temples are considered among the most architecturally interesting religious buildings on Nor'Ova and among the most practically useful, since between them the twins' clerical abilities cover almost every investigative need a city government might have.
- 1. Joasri in particular is sensitive on this point. Several accounts describe him responding to accusations of evil with a patience that is clearly running out.
- 2. Joasri's followers note that he is not bitter about the mischaracterization of his domain - he is simply tired of it, and there is a meaningful difference. Bitterness would require him to care what people think. Tiredness just means the correction has taken longer than expected.
- 3. Whether Joasri shares what he sees is at his discretion entirely. His followers have learned not to ask directly. They ask sideways, which he finds more interesting anyway.
- 4. There are various sources that also claim Joasri is a trickster, however other accounts exist that point to this as fabrication. Followers of Joasri claim that Joasri has no time for tricks, those, they claim, are the dominion of Xodod.
- 5. The practical implications of a god who knows secrets are significant. Joasri's followers are expected to maintain absolute discretion with anything they learn in his service. The penalty for betraying a secret given in shadow is considered severe, though Joasri himself has never specified what it is. He has simply never needed to.
- 6. There are almost certainly more priests of Joasri than anyone knows. This is exactly as Joasri intends.
- 7. This last ability requires significant skill to use precisely. A priest of Joasri asking what secrets live in a room will receive answers, but shadows accumulate secrets over time and sorting the relevant from the irrelevant requires discernment. Very old buildings are extremely noisy for priests of Joasri.
- 8. This puts him in occasional tension with Joasri, who holds that some things are appropriately hidden. The twins disagree on exactly where this line falls and have apparently been disagreeing about it since El Anon made them. Their followers regard the ongoing disagreement as theologically interesting. The twins themselves regard it as fraternal.
- 9. Whether this is a power or simply a quality of his presence is debated. His followers tend to say it is both.
- 10. Accounts exists of people who meet Nikolai for the first time meet him as something they secretly hate or perhaps fear, as a test to see what their true nature really is.
- 11. Nikolai's position on compelled truth is theologically interesting: he believes that a person who chooses to tell the truth has done something meaningful, while a person compelled to tell it has simply been overridden. He wants illumination, not compliance. His followers find this consistent and somewhat demanding.
- 12. Joasri has remarked, according to one account, that a faith dedicated to visibility should indeed be visible, and that he means this as a description rather than a criticism. His followers report that it was delivered in a tone that could have gone either way.
- 13. This last ability makes priests of Nikolai particularly effective working alongside priests of Joasri - the combination of seeing truly in darkness and knowing what secrets shadow holds is considered by both traditions to be one of El Anon's better design decisions.
- 14. A small theological school holds that the balance between shadow and light is in fact the most important cosmological fact about Nor'Ova, and that the current era's troubles are partly attributable to this balance being disturbed - by Zodo's influence on magic, by the Great Magic War, by various other cosmic events. Neither Joasri nor Nikolai has confirmed or denied this. Which is, their respective followers note, completely in character for both of them.
