Before the nations, before the wars, before the gods had names in mortal mouths - Norvus and Ova were here. Tending. Watching. Waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
Attributed to a druidic elder, tradition unknown
Norvus and Ova are the oldest stewards of Nor'Ova - created by El Anon at the very beginning to watch over the physical world before mortals arrived to complicate it. They are not gods of great cosmic drama. They do not imprison aspects of Zodo or reincarnate among mortals or govern the passage of souls. They tend. They maintain. They ensure that the soil remains fertile, that the seasons turn, that the animals are cared for, and that the world beneath everyone's feet continues to hold.
They are, as a result, among the least celebrated deities in the formal theological traditions of Nor'Ova - and among the most quietly essential.1
Ova
The wild does not need our permission to exist. It only needs us to stop pretending it does.
Attributed to a ranger of the Ova tradition
Characteristics
Ova is untamed in the way that nature itself is untamed - not hostile, not malevolent, but fundamentally indifferent to the preferences of civilization. She does not hate cities or farms. She simply does not consider them the point. Sher concern is the wild - forests, oceans, mountain ranges, the creatures that live in them, and the processes by which life sustains and renews itself. She is patient in the way of growing things, which is to say almost infinitely patient, and decisive in the way of storms, which is to say completely without warning.2
Personification
Ova appears as a weathered figure of indeterminate age - neither young nor old, neither particularly large nor small - who looks as though she has been outdoors for a very long time and is entirely comfortable with this. She is most often encountered in wild places rather than settlements, which her followers consider self-explanatory.3
Powers
Ova's power is that of the living natural world - growth, seasons, weather, and the vitality of animals and wild creatures. She can accelerate or retard growth, call or calm storms, communicate with any animal, and sense disturbances in natural ecosystems across great distances. Her power is not dramatic in the way of Zodo's or Kymara's, but it operates at a scale that makes most other divine power look local.4
Followers and Clerics of Ova
Ova's followers are rangers, druids, hunters, those who work the land in intimate contact with what grows, and those who simply understand that the natural world is not a backdrop to civilization but its foundation. They tend not to organize into formal churches - gathering instead in small groups tied to specific places, ecosystems, or traditions.5
Priests of Ova can speak with any animal and be understood. They add their Nature to checks involving nature, tracking, weather prediction, and the care of plants and animals. They can sense the health of an ecosystem within a significant radius, and they receive a bonus to checks made in natural environments - forests, plains, mountains, and wilderness - that decreases as the environment becomes more artificial.6
Norvus
He holds up everything. He always has. He just does not ask for credit.
Attributed to a miner of the Norvus tradition, Miden Kingdom
Characteristics
Where Ova tends to the living wild, Norvus tends to the physical foundation beneath it - the earth, the stone, the soil, the minerals, the bones of the world. He is steady where Ova is variable, permanent where she is seasonal, and profoundly unconcerned with urgency. Stone does not hurry. Neither does Norvus.7
Personification
Norvus appears as a broad, solid man of considerable age, with hair and skin the color of rich earth and eyes the color of deep stone. He is never in a hurry. He is never alarmed. He gives the impression of someone who has seen every catastrophe that has ever struck Nor'Ova and has waited, each time, for it to be over.8
Powers
Norvus's power is that of the physical earth - stone, soil, minerals, geological processes, and the slow memory that rock keeps of everything that has ever happened on and beneath its surface. He can raise or lower terrain, sense anything occurring underground, speak with the earth itself in a way that is less conversation and more consultation of an extremely long record. He knows where everything underground is - veins of ore, hidden ruins, buried things that have been buried for reasons.9
Followers and Clerics of Norvus
Norvus's followers include miners, farmers, stonemasons, architects, and the dwarves of the Miden Kingdom who regard him as the father of the earth itself. His worship is among the oldest on Nor'Ova and among the simplest - no elaborate ritual, no complex theology, just acknowledgment that the ground holds everything and someone should say thank you for that.10
Priests of Norvus can sense anything within the earth for a significant radius - ore, water, tunnels, ruins, the dead. They add their Endure trait to checks involving physical labor, stone, and underground navigation. They can communicate with the earth itself to learn the history of a location - what has stood here, what has fallen, what has passed through. The information is accurate but the timeframe it covers is vast, and filtering relevant information from irrelevant requires skill.11
Norvus and Ova Together
Norvus and Ova are not a couple in the mortal sense, though some folk traditions treat them as one. They are partners in stewardship - the living and the non-living aspects of the natural world, tending together what neither could tend alone. Their followers sometimes worship them jointly, particularly in agricultural communities where the health of the soil and the health of the crops are understood as inseparable concerns.12
Neither deity has been significantly involved in the major theological conflicts of Nor'Ova - the Great Magic War, the imprisoning of Zodo, the rise and fall of the Ascian Empire. They watched. They tended what was damaged. They waited. When asked about the great dramas of divine and mortal history, their followers generally report that they seem mildly interested and largely unbothered, which is considered either deeply reassuring or slightly disturbing depending on the person asking.
- 1. A theologian of the Church of Sol Anon once remarked that Norvus and Ova are "the gods you forget about until the harvest fails." This was intended critically. Followers of Norvus and Ova took it as an accurate summary of their role and have been using it approvingly ever since.
- 2. Rangers and druids who follow Ova often describe this quality as the most important thing to understand about working with her. She will wait forever and then act in an instant, and the interval between is not predictable.
- 3. The one documented account of Ova appearing inside a city describes her looking profoundly out of place and leaving as quickly as possible. Her followers consider this also self-explanatory.
- 4. When Ova acts globally - drought, plague across animal populations, mass migration of creatures - scholars tend to notice and describe it without connecting it to her. Her followers notice the connection. They rarely explain it to anyone who hasn't already figured it out.
- 5. Several attempts have been made to establish a formal church of Ova in urban settings. Ova's response to these attempts is not documented. Neither is her failure to prevent them, which her followers interpret as either approval or indifference, and disagree about which.
- 6. Priests of Ova in cities tend to be uncomfortable and mildly irritable. They are still perfectly capable of functioning - they simply prefer not to and are not subtle about it.
- 7. This quality makes Norvus the patron of those who plan in generations rather than years - dwarven architects, long-term farmers, those who plant trees whose shade they will not live to sit in. The Miden dwarves venerate him alongside El Anon, and consider the two complementary rather than competing.
- 8. This impression is accurate. He has.
- 9. This last quality makes priests of Norvus extremely valuable to mining operations and extremely uncomfortable to those who have buried things they would prefer stay buried. Both groups seek them out. The priests use discretion about which requests they fulfill.
- 10. The formal theological traditions of Nor'Ova have never quite known what to do with Norvus worship. It produces no heresies, no schisms, no dramatic conversions. It just continues, quietly, among those who work with the earth.
- 11. A priest of Norvus asking the earth what happened at a particular location will receive an accurate answer that covers the last several thousand years. Developing the skill to ask a specific enough question to get a useful answer is considered the primary work of Norvus's priesthood.
- 12. The joint worship of Norvus and Ova is one of the oldest religious practices on Nor'Ova, predating every formal church and most organized faiths. This does not grant it significant theological prestige in the major churches, but it does mean it is essentially impossible to eradicate. It simply continues wherever people farm.
