Tallas

God of Oaths, Truth, Reciprocity, Ritual, Hospitality, the Ecliptic, Orders, Laws, and Physics

Truth is that for which Belief is Not Necessary; Belief is that for which Truth is Not Relevant.

The Keeper of the Bridge, King of the Scales, Maker of the First Seal, Who Spoke First of All, Last of the Ahuras, Holder of the Sword of Binding, Who Gives and Receives, the Layer of the Great Road

Tallas, the Lord of Oaths, is one of the most pervasive gods — at least, in the minds of the common folk. He is rarely invoked — not because he is absent or his favour mostly irrelevant, like some of the other gods, but rather because he is too powerful, too omnipresent. Vows and oaths taken in Tallas’ name cannot be broken; sometimes this takes the form of physical impossibility (a vow to never speak a lie might cause the speaker to start choking whenever he attempts to utter one), while other times it is met with swift judgement.

While this may seem useful, Tallas’ punishments are crippling and often even lethal; he observes only the wording of an oath or vow, not its intent, and a promise made in Tallas’ name, or to the god himself, cannot be retracted under any circumstance. Even if both sides agree to retract an oath, the inflexible god of rituals will hold both parties to their word, for Tallas is not the god of Agreements, and his domain are all those rules immutable, and all those consequences inevitable. Tallas is limited as other gods are not, for Tallas may never intervene except when asked; but Tallas’s power is second only to Hausōs, for he was first of the Enthroned, and of all the Thrones he is closest to the Brighter Half; all other Thrones, and all other worlds, are painted in his colours first and foremost.

Being a god who can place rails upon the sun and split up from down, Tallas’ services are generally used by mortals only in the most desperate or lopsided of negotiations. The one mercy that the exceedingly rigid god provides is that no oath or vow can be taken in another’s name, nor can any promise observed by Tallas be inherited. Each mortal life has, at the very least, the freedom to choose his own vows and his own oaths, and decide what promises are so important that they merit a god as witness.

As king of the ecliptic, who laid the road upon which the chariot of Hausōs travels every day, Tallas sees all that transpires in the world below; oathbreakers cannot hope to hide from the great eye which traverses the first of all roads. As the first to have laid a fixed path upon which to travel, Tallas is also the god of hospitality towards travellers — for you will see them again, when they once again travel the Road — and of ritual — for what is ritual but taking a fixed path to a destination?