24 Sun Gods

There are 24 sun gods; 24 emperors who ring in the day and lay down the night; 24 great and terrible Hours, who rule the 24 sects of humanity.

There are 24 suns, and they are all at war.

[sidebar: the names of the 24 evil wizards below are stolen from the real world cultures which (very loosely) inspired them. If you take any part of this post for your own games, I suggest renaming them- I'm just riffing on a tumblr post]

1 - Tagaloa
Light has weight, and Tagaloa is the scale. Those who earn his ire float off into the sky, or are smashed flat by the weight of their own skulls. He's got a lot of tricks up his sleeves; currently, he's working on time travel. He will be 16 in December.

He is orbited by twin moons of his own creation. The shadow of one blinds the eye, the other blinds the soul. He hasn't experienced guilt in a decade.

His desires are those of a teenage sociopath.

 

2 - Kāne
Light is life, and Kāne is the life-bringer. He raises angels out of mud and turns deserts into lush jungles. Nothing can die under his watchful eye, so butchers work in the dark.

War was once a nighttime activity in the kingdom of the living. Kāne was so distraught by this that he refused to leave the sky. To his dismay, this has not banished violence from his kingdom, only made it more horrific: an endless, deathless war rages in the heart of Polynesia.

He desires an end to all suffering.

3 - Malina
Light is justice, and Malina is the judge. At night, with a fistful of ash, she marks the guilty for death; in the morning, the touch of sunlight annihilates all who bear her mark. This is where vampires come from.

Her throne on Novarupta has been exploding non-stop for the last hundred years, raining volcanic ash on everyone in a 100 mile radius. She has given up on her people. All are guilty. All are consigned to the night.

She desires solitude. To this end, she orchestrates extinction.

4 - Coyote
Light is gold, and Coyote is a thief. At night, he plunders the underworld. In the morning, he escapes into the sky with a big $$$ sack on his back, adding it to his collection.

He is mythically skilled with fang, arrow, riddle, rope, fire, shovel, smoke, shadow, and escape artistry. You may meet him in any dungeon in the world, if you are unlucky.

There was another sun before him. He desires its resurrection.

5 - Tsohanoai 
Light is kin, and Tsohanoai is the patriarch. He carries the sun on his back in the most literal sense. His skin is indestructible tungsten alloy, and his word is law. He rarely speaks- he is so busy.

His children are many rays of the sun, who rule the earth as extensions of his will. They run the gamut from cruel to heroic to clueless. All of them are spoiled rotten with metallic skin, but none are indestructible.

He desires one of his children to grow up and succeed him.

6 - Huītzilōpōchtli
Light is blood, and Huītzilōpōchtli is the butcher. The red sun of his time zone beats with the spoils of a thousand years of war and sacrifice. He orchestrates war and carves up the losers. He is ravenously hungry and an excellent father to a host of legendary warriors.

He is technically a vampire, able to drain the light from a fire while leaving its heat, as are his sons and daughters. He is a champion wrestler, mythically good at fighting in the dark, and feeding only makes him stronger.

He desires praise for all the time he spends drop-kicking demons into Hell.

 

7 - Kisosen
Light is size, and Kisosen is a really, really big eagle. Each day he eats a few hundred horses and kicks up a tropical hurricane. Anything that gets too close to his airspace in the daytime gets obliterated by a 200 ton bird-of-prey-slash-nuclear-reactor.

Mutagenic light cascades off of his wings: everything the light touches gradually increases in size, until the point where it attracts his attention and is promptly devoured. Kisosen's territory is a land of hubristic giants and humble pygmies.

His desires are those of a very large eagle. He is not a very complicated god.

8 - Inti
Light is gold, and Inti is value itself. He can see thru any object of worth, exist in many places at once (often appearing as a trio of glittering statues), and turn precious metals to mud and vice versa.

Inti is disillusioned with the hearts of men, so easily swayed by gold. His many selves express his manifold grief thru poetry and waste time manipulating them into good deeds with economic incentives.

He desires the betterment of humanity. Failing that, he would settle for a race of hyper-altruistic extraterrestrials.

 

9 - Tupã
Light is lightning, and Tupã is the thunder. They descended to earth centuries ago and made humanity from a burning tree stump. In an instant, they divided creation into male and female, heaven and earth, past and future. Then, they departed as quickly as they arrived.

The Tupã that remains is an echo of the absent god. They ricochet from pole to pole, repeating their predecessor's motions; the martial art Ka'a Pau descends from these forms.

10 - Guaraci
Light is love, and Guaraci is beloved by all. All sunkissed creatures in his empire love him unconditionally, singing his hymns and kissing his feet. In the shade, they return to their senses, and scheme to destroy him.

Guaraci ascended to godhood after casting off the shadow on his human heart. Thus, he is incapable of negative emotions. His shadow misses him dearly.

He desires world peace.

 

11 - Liza
Light is certainty, and Liza is the cold hard facts. Her gaze banishes chance and randomness, and her realm is a complex interlocking mechanism of predestination. In her presence, free will reduces to a handful of simple equations.

Liza lives in the sun, a floating palace of gold and sand. She draws perfect knowledge of the future from the external computing cluster within, extending her limited-range omniscience. Also hidden in the sun is a pitch black room where she allows chaos to flourish- her jesters live here, writing jokes.

All of her desires (love, family, power) have already been fulfilled in the future. Now she's just waiting.

12 - Belenos
Light heals, and Belenos is the cure. He rides overland in a white chariot, visiting each of his countrymen in turn and sampling their hospitality when he tires. Everyone knows he owns no throne. His favorite food is boar gristle stew.

He can knit bone and dispel blindness with his laughter. However, a recent depression has shaken the foundation of his power; alas, his divine cousins can be so cruel! Cheer up, Belenos!

He desires a happy, shapely wife.

 

13 - Sol Invictus
Light is victory, and Sol Invictus cannot lose. Once a runty god of war, he rose to the position of superior imperative by liberal application of wit and treachery. In truth, his victory was inevitable; his will to succeed absorbs all others, in the folklorically literal sense.

He has already conquered his divine extended family, the progenitor titan race, a dragon by the name of Cornedrus binonix, the space race, the popular vote, throat cancer, the nation-state of Atlantis, income inequality, rap music, and death. He likes board games.

He desires worldwide monotheistic worship.

 

14 - Amun-Ra
Light is color, and Amun-Ra is the rainbow. They were born in antiquity when seven warrior-kings collided and amalgamated in noble war-conflagration. They speak in the seven voices that twist the hearts of men. Their chariot is pulled by a lion-beetle-eagle-crocodile-bull-jackal-man chimera.

Amun-Ra's power over emotion extends beyond animals: they can make clouds weep, rivers rage, and mountains fall to despair. They can even accomplish this remotely via written poetry.

They desire dominion over creation, love, immortality, knowledge, simple pleasure, spiritual enlightenment, and blackest revenge.

15 - Shamsum
Light conceals, and Shamsum is the secret.

 

16 - Ara the Beautiful
Light is a sword, and Ara the Beautiful is its wielder. An overwhelmingly talented martial artist, he learned to parry light itself in order to steal godhood from his predecessor. His disciples wield lightsabers, naturally.

He holds the world at swordpoint. Those who speak ill of him do so at night, in deepest cavern, without even a candle lit, lest their heads silently roll off their shoulders. If you do not pronounce his full, glorious title, you are considered to be speaking ill.

He desires an honorable death in combat. 

17 - The Adityas
Light reflects, and the Adityas are its reflections. They inhabit the 21 heavenly palaces, which exist only in the 21 mirror realms, and quietly contemplate the universe. Each excels in a single, superlative art of war.

They share a single, blindingly bright soul, but possess completely opposite personalities. When it becomes necessary, they can merge into a single body, but they despise this.

They desire collective enlightenment.

18 - Gün Ana
Light is thread, and Gün Ana is the weaver. She wears the sun as a cloak, and sails across the world in a silken barge. When she tires of her duties, she hangs her cloak on a tree branch and dons a mask to cause mischief.

All that the light touches is bound together. With a tug of her finger, she can pull these threads tight, stitching disparate things and concepts into new wholes.

She desires the world's greatest song, such that she can perform it to the universe.

 

19 - Mat Ga Trong
Light is time, and Mat Ga Trong is the timekeeper. Time only moves when she does, so she feels no sense of urgency. Her kingdom is time displaced from the rest of the world due to frequent sabbaticals and general lethargy.

Her palanquin is borne across the sky by a squad of elite chronopaladins, handpicked from the distant future. She keeps a statuary of assassins, each one frozen in time mid-strike.

She desires an easy life.

 

20 - Xihe
Light is royalty, and Xihe is its matriarch. She gave birth to many suns, all of whom ruled for centuries before falling prey to political assassinations. Now only one of her sons, the 3-Legged Emperor, remains.

Her immortality is diluted in her children and their children's children. To rekindle her dying empire, she sired many new heirs across the world, recognizable by the golden glow of their eyes (a far cry from the faded irises of the current dynasty). Meanwhile, her son takes increasingly drastic measures to exterminate these would-be heirs.

She desires a bloodless, traditional regime change.

 

21 - Amaterasu
Light is fortune, and Amaterasu is a fickle mistress. In her presence, the earth shifts, forests burn, and genes splice; more specifically, the most probable outcome is exchanged with the most improbable. This is the price of her immortality, and by extension the stability of her empire. The sun must always rise. All else is mutable.

Mutations are common. Earthquakes are everyday; tsunamis are everyhour. An orderly pastoral existence for her favored subjects abuts chaos-warped wastes.

She desires the thrill of high stakes gambling.

 

22 - Gnowee
Light is fire, and Gnowee is the torchbearer. When her realm was robbed of light by a sun-swallowing prince, she ventured to the Underworld and brought back the undead flame. In her timezone, light must be carefully distributed across vast expanses of darkness, lest the land itself collapse into endless night.

Gnowee is mortal, and running out of time. Although she is queen, she cannot hold a candle to a god, and she is uncertain that her dilettante son can be trusted with what remains of the sun.

She desires the future she feels was stolen from her people. She will settle for revenge.

23 - Qat
Light is the absence of darkness, and Qat is the impenetrable night. Each night, he throws dusk over the world with his arrival. In the summer, he tears the dark away with the red obsidian knife named dawn. In the winter, he pulls the night in like a fishing net, slowly, and eats whatever he catches.

The darkness he weaves swallows all light, without exception: even other gods can be caught in his trap (and Qat is not a picky eater).

He desires a legendary feast- this will be his final meal.

 

24 - Tama-nui-te-rā
Light is a prison, and Tama-nui-te-rā is prisoner and jailor alike. His timezone is an inescapable Hell ruled by demons and exiles, all banished from the other sun realms. It rains blood and fire here. Shit is fucked.

The other sun gods maintain his bondage via stasis. If they were to upset the balance of powers, trespass the time zones, etc., Tama-nui-te-rā would break free, unleashing the ranks of Hell over all of creation.

He has forgotten desire. He is synonymous with the law of inertia.

The Half-Hours

Nakuset. Mithra. Zun. Surya. Marici. Bila. They are fledgling sun gods without true thrones, vassals to the 24 emperors who ring in the day and lay down the night. Their power is undeveloped, the true aspect of their light yet to be revealed.

(They would probably make great player characters.)

nic cabal
just pretend i fit nika in here somehow