The Life Giver

The Life Giver is the youngest of the gods, born from the remnants of the Shirren Oversoul after the Sundering. They are a deity of life, strongly associated with and wielding power over the mortal soul, and are frequently viewed as a divine patron both of the natural world and the mystical connections which some mortals have to powerful forces which fuel their aetheractive capabilities. The Life Giver's worship is perhaps the most organized of any immortal, with the megachurch known as the Wards of the Life Giver dedicated to her service. Through this organization and the powerful Soulforge which it created, the life giver imbues souls into androids, the only legal means to breath life into such constructs.

Origin

After the Sundering in 1157 SSD, the Shirren oversoul known as Omnimie was severed from its physical bodies. Though damaged and disoriented by the sudden deprivation of the physical neurological bases upon which it had relied for the entirety of its existence, Omnimie was not dissipated as some during the Silence years had feared, but survived drifting aimlessly in the aether. It is not known what transformed the damaged vestiges of Omnimie into the diety that emerged from the Silence, and the spirits suspected of keeping such knowledge are bound by the Pact of Silence. The Life Giver revealed itself to mortalkind in the dreams of most Shirren, with whom they seemed to have retained an affinity, and through further visions sent to individuals on the worlds of the Navigator's Chosen gave rise to the church that would become the Wards of the Life Giver, delivering a gospel of tolerance and sanctity of life and freedom.

Divine Domain and Circumstances

The Life Giver is a god of life, both biochemical and mystical. They seem to have a superb mastery over the structures of mortal souls, one which exceeds even that of the Forgemaster or Navigator; this ability has meant that in some corners of the galaxy, they are seen as a god of the mind as well as of the body; while this aspect of the Life Giver is acknowledged in more mainstream worship, it is rarely emphasized. The Life Giver is celebrated widely, with rites performed at celebrations of births, deaths, harvests, and, primarily within their churches, the day of their revelations to mortalkind, falling between the 13th and the 16th of the SSD tenmonth.

As the originator of the mortal and divinely sanctioned android souls produced and imbued at the Soulforge, the Life Giver is also often associated as a god of the modern android and by extension of artificial life and digital consciousness, although most mainstream practice views this aspect of the divine as an extension of their veneration of birth,

Depictions and Followers

The Life Giver is often portrayed as a beautiful androgynous Shirren draped in white cloth with a seedling in one hand and a halo made of humanoid figures dancing in a ring. This dancing halo and the seedling are the most common identifiers of the Life Giver in art and iconography, but the cornucopia, crescent moon, leaf, or seed are also widespread symbology.

The Life Giver, as the most active divine in mortal spheres, is the one with the widest following, as many common folk attend services in the temples of the Wards, and the festivities they encourage (of birth, death, harvests, etc) are common across colonized space. Mages drawing their power from abstract forces of the Aether are common worshippers of the Life Giver, as are the mortals which they imbue with power directly. Doctors and farmers are their favored professions, and shrines to the Life Giver are common in clinics and feed shops.