[hider=Dinn]
[B]Name/Titles:[/B] Dinn, Keeper of the Flood, Dinn the Transient, The Keeper of the Threshold.

[B]Sex/Gender:[/B] Male

[B]Pantheon/Affiliation:[/B] Deity

[B]Patronage:[/B]
[indent]Naturally running water, rain, contained water (and man-made containers, particularly urns), thresholds, death

Dinn is responsible for ferrying souls to the underworld, and so he is associated with ‘passing’ in all its forms. He sees no difference between crossing from one room to another and crossing from the mortal world to the afterlife. With this comes a sense of inevitability and natural flow, hence the association with running water and rain. However, he is not unknown to ‘bend the rules’, and so his interference with the water cycle, in the form of storing water is representative of that.[/indent]

[B]Appearance:[/B][indent]Clay Form: Dinn typically takes a form similar to that of a mortal, but is patently not. He is much bigger, for a start, and just so happens to have four arms. Much of his body comprises mortal(like) flesh, but his hips, legs, much of his back, and half his stomach from the left side is composed from a terracotta, clay mosaic, as are both his bonus arms and the top half of his face, including, eerily, his eyes. His body is completely bald and his ears, pointed. Needless to say, Dinn is absolutely stacked.

He is perpetually drenched: in places, his mosaic skin is cracked, with water perpetually dribbling through, giving him a certain glisten. In particular, the palms of his terracotta arms, which are always pressed together as though in prayer, overflow with water, making him basically a walking fountain. He wears nothing but a white, ankle-length, silk sarong from the hips, that somehow flows majestically, despite also being completely waterlogged (ah, the mysteries of the divine). While this form is stable, he can dissolve himself into nothing but water and shards of clay.

Liquid Form: Dinn may emerge from urns or running water, taking essentially the same form but with all four arms free, but comprised of water instead. While in liquid form, he does not constrain himself to 'mortal physics', and so may blossom extra limbs, take any size (irrespective of the volume of water he emerges from) and generally be somewhat trippy to behold. He may emerge from any man-made container with liquid contents, so could theoretically comprise honey, wine or any other contained liquid. Being 'insubstantial' in this way, he has no voice in this form.

Dinn prefers to take the form of liquid, though he cannot sustain himself in a transient body for extended periods at a time. When appearing to mortals on good terms, this is the form he will typically take, pointing as his primary form of communication. Naturally, he can appear almost anywhere that is suitable for him to exist. His clay form, as the far more imposing, and, frankly, practical, is his default, and the one he will use upon visiting mortals when in a less benevolent mood.[/indent] 

[B]Parentage:[/B]
[indent]Lymaeus’ son, cast from a clay fountain and her own flesh.[/indent] 

[B]Centres of Worship/Places of Power:[/B]
[indent]The Temple of Passing is Dinn’s primary centre of worship (location to be determined). It is a huge construction featuring many many chambers, each of which connected by a completely open arch. While the followers of Dinn guard the temple, there is nothing archaeologically stopping a given mortal meandering through each and every room, and, within reason, strangers are welcome to do so. The temple is almost completely devoid of features, constructed of nothing but flat stone and arches, with domed ceilings. The only contents of the temple are urns, and plenty of them, neatly ordered and categorised by Dinn himself. It is strictly forbidden to touch or peer inside any urn in the temple without Dinn’s blessing, and there are many myths about what happens to mortals that do, including, naturally, being turned into or imprisoned in an urn themselves.

Almost all of the chambers are identical, but for the biggest one, located at the temple’s centre. This is Dinn’s personal chamber, The Chamber of the Altar of Rain, where his throne is built into an impossibly tall pyramid of urns. Because the inside of this chamber is somehow perpetually raining, the urns are constantly overflowing, making a huge fountain. This fountain drains into a great well before the throne, forming a vortex of swirling water, which is said to lead directly to the Nassan Falls.

Underneath the Temple of Passing, through a passage only Dinn and his most trusted can find, there is a crypt of inactive clay golems: more on them later.

Dinn’s places of power are those places relevant to his portfolio, such as cellars where liquids may be stored, rivers and waterfalls, and, probably most pertinent to mortals, thresholds of all kinds. It is common for mortals to briefly acknowledge Dinn upon entering or exiting a building.[/indent] 

[B]Servants, Prominent Followers and Worship Base:[/B]
[indent]Almost all mortals pay their dues to Dinn, as he is the arbiter of their immortal fate. As the one responsible for their journey to the afterlife, he is relevant to every mortal that will die. According to almost universal doctrine, it is Dinn that presides over the passing of souls from this life to the next, though, naturally, he very rarely does this in person. It is instead his servants, the Guardians of Passage, that commend the deceased soul to the heavens, before it manifests itself as the rain in the central chamber of the Temple of Passing and passing through to the underworld. While followers of other gods may have their own deity the primary feature of their death rites, concessions are typically made to the Guardians of Passage in at least an administrative capacity. Where those concessions are not made, it is said that Dinn keeps the souls for himself in the topmost urn in The Chamber of the Altar of Rain when they inevitably reach him.

The Guardians of Passage are Dinn’s primary sect of fervent worship. They are monastic in structure and have branches covering spiritual matters (such as commending souls to the heavens), military (defending the Temple of Passing) and personal (serving Dinn personally).

It is typical for followers of Dinn and those soon to die to make tributes to Dinn, typically in the form of an urn (with something valuable inside, of course) dedicated to him on a threshold or in a place of prominence in the house. Those really seeking to carry his favour make pilgrimages to the Temple of Passing with their tribute to deliver it in person. The tribute is simply stored with all the other urns.

The Exempt are a privileged few, exclusive to the powerful, the rich, and the upper echelons of the Guardians of Passage. They pay, in essence, not to die. Through a ritual ceremony, sometimes conducted by Dinn himself, their immortal soul is stored in one of Dinn’s urns, where it is safe from being forced to pass into the next life. Needless to say, this requires a tribute of the highest quality, and implies a life of servitude and dedication to Dinn, and political support for the Guardians of Passage. Other gods tend to frown on this practice, for fear that dedication to Dinn would diminish their own standing. Alternatively, one may become an exempt via sacrificing another mortal (of Dinn's choosing) so that he may claim that soul for his own. While becoming exempt does quell death, it does [i]not[/i] prevent ageing (though it does slightly slow the process): eventually, the mortal must accept their fate - and Dinn keeps their soul permanently. It is rumoured (ie: true) that, underneath the Temple of Passing, there is an enormous crypt containing four-armed clay statues in the likeness of the Exempt. Should Dinn combine these statues with their respective souls, they become golems, utterly subservient to the Keeper of the Flood.

There are only four active golems, the original mortal founders of the Guardians of Passage, who currently are the 'saints' of the sect, even though they no longer retain any of their humanity or characteristics. They are known as The Corporeal. While any three-dimensional depiction of Dinn is strictly forbidden, depictions of The Corporeal are incredibly common among Dinn's followers. Since the deity is frequently invoked in human poetry and theatre as a proxy for the passage of time, inevitability, and, of course, death, but his image is taboo, The Corporeal are depicted as his agents.

While it is not clear whether this is merely myth, crafted from those poets and playwrights that worship him, Dinn is known to appear in his liquid form to mortals in need at a threshold, and provide a gateway to wherever they need to be.[/indent]

[B]Psychology:[/B]
[indent]Dinn is a deity not given to fraternising with mortals. He considers himself superior than them, and is rarely interested in the minutia of their lives, and so interacts with mortals primarily through the Guardians of Passage. That mortals should suffer or fear death is of no consequence to him, and, though he is theoretically capable of causing a complete cessation of human mortality, he is too uninterested to bother. 

What truly motivates him, with respect to mortals, is, though he does not admit it, their complete and utter adoration and submission. This is the purpose of tributes in his honour: no material gain (being divine, he has no need of gold), but simply a physical manifestation of his value in mortal eyes. He is a jealous and possessive god (aren't they all?) who, though he administers the passing of souls to the underworld, is not unknown to embezzle souls for himself: those who refuse to bow to the minimum standard of funeral rites are, as far as Dinn is concerned, his for the taking. His corruption with regard to the Exempt is also a sore spot among the heavens, though he is known for doing this in conjunction with other gods for reciprocal gain. Despite having crossed the 'corrupt' threshold, he is careful not to fly too close to the sun.

After having been imprisoned in Sharzunates, Dinn was left more scarred than vengeful, and has been left with the divine equivalent of claustrophobia, and a hatred of being trapped in any enclosed space. For this reason, it is strictly forbidden for mortals to make statues in his honour, for fear of his form being 'captured'.

While powerful and proud, Dinn is not known for great intellect or pro-activeness.[/indent]
 
[B]History:[/B] 
[indent]- Subject to change as relationships emerge.
Dinn was the first being born to Lymaeus, and was born to Lymaeus and her alone. She took water from the greatest fountain in Krona and cast with it her own flesh: Dinn was born a god with a transient form of vapours and flowing water that billowed and flourished as he wished. He was at this point not yet responsible for the flow of souls to the underworld, as Ventu's destructive rule took this upon himself.

Dinn was too uninterested in anything but his own freedom to be concerned with the rebellion against Ventu - until Ventu was minded to exile him as well. However, Dinn was too immaterial to lock away, and so was thrust back into the fountain of his origin, sealed inside the great four-armed clay statue from which the water itself flowed. The entire fountain was ripped from Krona and itself thrust into Sharzunates with Dinn within it, where it served as the gate (technically 'dam') to the prison of the gods.

When it came for Sileon to release the prisoners of Sharzunates, he was unable to release Dinn in his original form, and so Dinn was released from the fountain by bringing it with him, hence the half-clay form he has to this day. When returned, his very form was a testament to his suffering, and so joined the other gods in their revolt against Ventu, and, with Ventu vanquished, he took it upon himself, with his ties to Mephas personal, to guide mortal souls there such that they need not suffer as he did.

However, he overestimated his own beneficence, and his period of mortal interest was brief. It was during this time that he reached popularity as a deity among mortals, with the construction of the Temple of Passing and establishment of the Guardians of Passage - from there, he began to grow uninterested in mortal affairs (his heart was never truly in it), and his influence declined somewhat, though his following remains an institution, if a little passive.[/indent]

[B]Relationships:[/B] 
[indent]WIP[/indent]
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