You Were Once Gods

You Were Once Gods

a recollection by J'ahqar Nowatha

J'ahqar has been told the Imperial City is "the city of a thousand cults". This is the best kind of lie. It is like the nut seller who dresses cheap cashews in a fancy bag, or the one-night-lover who says you will remember him the rest of your life. A lie you want to believe. One that makes the world seem more than it is.

J'ahqar has seen the farmers of souls rising with the sun. Shouting at the crowds, sowing their seeds, watching them sprout and grow in weak, nourishing soil. Some act pious. Some ostentatious. But you can see the greed in their eyes as their crops grow. How and when they harvest concerns either bankers or gravediggers.

They go by many different names, but truthfully just as one has never been able to tell a Wayrest Heirloom from a Colovian Giant (they are simply "tomatoes" to me) each theological nitpick blurs into the next. But "the thousands of religious permutations resulting from a handful of base patterns" does not stir the soul. So a thousand cults it is.

However, as with all data sets, there are outliers that fail to fit the trend.

And so it happened that one warm spring day, sitting outside enjoying tea and hummus with J'ahqar's co-workers from the census office, that this one overheard a woman yelling to the crowds.

"You! All of you! You were all once gods!"

J'ahqar did not turn. Never make eye contact, first rule of dealing with vagrants. Yet the line was intriguing. Most barkers try to sell a kind of victimhood. Or some secret truth. This crier was doing both, but J'ahqar had never hear it phrased like this before.

"Yes you were all gods, and shall be again. Arkay was once a humble shopkeeper. Now he is the judge of life and death. Akatosh was the daughter of a weaver, now the dragon lord holds time itself in his hands. Even the demon lords once walked Nirn as you and I do."

That was a new one. This one kept his eyes forward but allowed his attention to drift away from the conversation on tax brackets to listen more closely to the mad woman's proclimations.

"My brothers and sisters, a reckoning is coming. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but it will come."

Ah there it is. The "join us and be saved from the soon-to-come apocalypse" hook.

"And every one of you will die whether you join us or not."

Maybe not.

"But there will also come a reckoning for the reckoners. The light and the dark pull all apart, and even those who know the right paths may stumble. You all once did. You all have fallen low."

J'ahqar must admit he did not know where she was going with this.

"But that is not the end of your story. None of the stories on the wheels within wheels ever truly end. The mighty will fall. That is your chance to rise up and seize again what was once yours. Meet with the masters of soul walk, and we will teach you to prepare for that day."

At that point we had to get back to our offices. This one did not hear any more of what the penny-prophet had to say. Nor did J'ahqar ever see her again. Yet in all the times this one has walked along the canals of the capital of capitals, listening to one would-be Marukh yell how his true gods are completely different from the true gods being peddled around the corner, one does not think one has ever heard a pitch quite the same as hers.