The Life Giver
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The Life Giver is the youngest of the gods, born from the remnants of the Omnimie Oversoul after the fall of the silence severed them from their bodies. 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 is the most active of the divines in mortal affairs; the church known as the Wards of the Life Giver is perhaps the most widely spread single cult in the galaxy.
Origin
After the Sundering in 1157 SSD, the great soul of the Omnian people 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 Omnians, 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.
Cult, Rituals, and Veneration
The Life Giver is a god of life, both biochemical and mystical. Although young even by the standards of spacefaring civilization, a period of notably high activity immediately following the silence has embedded their cult into the life of most colonized regions of space. Rituals for fertility, celebrations of childbirth, and funeral rites frequently invoke their name. Offerings of food and drink and the pouring of libations are common ways to curry their favor at such times.
The Life Giver is also widely seen to have domain over medicine and healing, and hospitals across the galaxy are built with prominent shrines. Donations to hospitals or medical causes is a frequent form of offering to the Life Giver, particularly for those themselves in need of healing. For the healthy, donating to blood drives run by local branches of the Life Giver’s cult is seen as a particularly favored offering; the blood gathered in these drives is treated with special care, and is preferred for use by doctors when it is available.
Agriculture is widely seen to be within their domain, but peripheral; while a small portion of the harvest is often set aside for them, they are typically secondary to local spirits in the case of planetary farms and the Forgemaster for spaceborne growers.
As the originator of the mortal and divinely sanctioned android souls produced and imbued at the Soulforge, the Life Giver is also often seen 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. The granting of a soul to an artificial body is without a doubt the most reliable divine miracle of any scale and political significance in the galaxy today. These awakenings take place on the planet-spanning Soulforge, which was built over the course of nearly a century according to plans transmitted by mystics of the Life Giver and the Forgemaster. This ritual requires great commitment on the part of those wishing to awaken the android. The Soulforge is naturally the most holy place of the Life Giver, and is a major site for pilgrims seeking the gods’ blessings.
The most common small form of devotion to the Life Giver are plants of specially selected cultivars kept in specially marked pots. The provision of special care to such plants, such as fertilizers or purchase of new ones, is the most frequent form of devotion found in the general population. In some regions, small animals of species viewed as especially favored by the gods are kept according to specialized and ritualized local practice; it is custom that these creatures be kept for generations. While some rich individuals or larger clans with generational homes do keep such sacred creatures themselves, it is more common in regions which follow such custom for them to be kept by local churches, and taken on temporarily by those seeking the god’s favor.
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.
