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The Divine Duduk Business: Creativity

Creativity is a goddess of arts, inspiration, freedom, self-expression, and of course creativity. She has mostly-white fur, with patches of greys and browns. Her bangs are usually done up with a short upward curl on one side, in a style that resembles a paintbrush's brush-end, coloured into a rainbow. Her eyes change colour as she pleases, typically to suit her outfit. She designs outfits for herself and the other DDB members, with her own usually being highly avant-garde. She is the bustiest of the Business, not counting Benefaction on the occasions he chooses to take on a female form. An F+ type, she is taller than Lust and shorter than Benefaction.

Statues of Creativity often feature her holding a paintbrush or pencil, with a canvas or paper nearby, sculpting, playing an instrument, etc., or else show her modeling, which she has been known to do. She is used as a symbol by institutions of music, theater, and so forth, and has personally served as a muse for some creative individuals such as Mogstren Kilnax (the lead singer of Hyper Scream), Ingrid Juggernautsbane (founder of the art collective known as The Architectural Scourge Gang), and Jiminus Claig (renowned folk photographer and outsider furniture-designer). Due to her reputation as a free spirit, she is sometimes used as a symbol by those who express themselves in ways that are against the local laws, such as graffiti artists. It is generally blasphemy to interfere with the creation of art, while operating under her symbol. Deliberate censorship of art can also be blasphemous if done while operating under her symbol, but there are some corner cases where these may be acceptable. To avoid invoking the ire of Enforcement, it is recommended just to refrain from doing those altogether.

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The Divine Duduk Business: Cunning

Cunning is a F+ Duduk with near-black fur and green irises. She is slim and sleek, and smaller than Benefaction, with more pronounced fangs than his. She usually goes without her glowing aura. She is a goddess of strategy, sneaking, quick thinking, and careful research. Her role overlaps substantially with the non-Duduk deity known as Trickster, but with less of a focus on making trouble, and more of a focus on knowledge. She gathers intelligence and formulates plans to achieve the DDB's goals. She has been known to disguise herself as a mortal and go among actual mortals to observe or interfere. Unlike Trickster, however, who likes to reveal themself at opportune times, it is believed that most of Cunning's exploits are known only to the DDB, and other entities of uncanny knowledge.

Cunning is used as a symbol by spy agencies, military strategists, and research institutions. Her statues are usually made to depict her in a cool, sneaky pose, and she is often depicted in a dark trenchcoat. She is not as permissive as Lust, regarding desecration of her statues, but she is at least more apathetic about it than Enforcement. Attempting to hide information, under her symbol, is not considered blasphemous. Unmasking her personally, under any of the DDB’s symbols, is. Fortunately, this is not easy to do by accident.

Cunning is very creative, though it is in a particular way, and at times her creativity may be in the service of destruction. The most creative of the Divine Duduk Business would have to be the one named... Creativity.

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The Divine Duduk Business: Lust

Lust is a Female+ Duduk, with white fur and blue eyes. She is smaller, and more average in fluff, than Benefaction, and modestly bustier than Enforcement. She is a goddess of sexual desires, consent, and xenophilia. While she is driven by her sensual urges, and indulges them in a near-unbroken fashion, she is an expert in medical sciences, and far from mindless. Of the DDB, she is one of the most permissive regarding images of herself, and has modeled and acted in more pornography than even many other sex deities.

Lust is commonly used as a symbol by brothels and sex shops, and to a lesser extent, drugstores. Her statues are usually made to depict her either masturbating or engaged in coitus (as she is rarely not doing one of those things), but it is fine to depict her in non-sexual situations. She is known to make use of drugs of many kinds in lovemaking, as well. For this reason, she is a popular figure with recreational drug users, and is depicted using drugs in a disproportionate amount of works considering her actual frequency of use. However, she usually does not mind. Even defacing her statues is not blasphemous, unless whoever owns the statue did not agree to it, in which case it definitely is. Crossing people's boundaries in a way they did not agree to, under her symbol, is blasphemous as well.

While Lust's vices frequently lead her to be in a condition unsuited for thinking for stretches of time, she is a very thoughtful person, and has more situational awareness than one might expect. None of the DDB are fools. However, the cleverest of the bunch is definitely Cunning.

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The Divine Duduk Business: Enforcement

Enforcement is an infertile-female (F-) Duduk who has a glowing aura like the other members of the Divine Duduk Business. She is significantly larger and beefier than Benefaction, with a sterner face. Her busts are very slight. As her name suggests, she is a goddess of rules and the enforcement thereof. She serves as the muscle of the Business, collecting on debts and serving as an occasional bodyguard to the other members. We can see here an example of how the members' roles have some overlap; of the Business, Benefaction most strongly presents a protective aspect, but Enforcement can also be protective, albeit in a way that is typically more intimidating, and leans to the offensive side rather than defensive. Her claws and fangs are more pronounced than those of the other DDB members, and her lower set of arms is proportionally larger and more muscular. She is one of the most consistently well-groomed and well-dressed, and the most vulgar-mouthed (in the right company, of course).

Enforcement is commonly used as a symbol by police, and with varying degrees of irony, by rules lawyers. She personally only enforces the DDB's rules, but she will attempt to obey the rules of places she visits. She hates when people enforce rules that they themselves do not obey when they're supposed to, and doing so under her symbol is technically an act of blasphemy. She may not make a personal visit, but she may send someone to break your kneecaps on her behalf if you make a significant habit of blasphemies against any of the Business.

In another example of overlapping properties, F- Duduk are usually more aggressive than fertile-female(F+) Duduk in general, but also in regards to sex, desiring it more frequently and more strongly than the F+ women. This results in mild friction with Lust, who is not only an F+, but as her name suggests, she is significantly more sexually desirous than even Enforcement, who is no slouch in that department.

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The Divine Duduk Business: Benefaction

Benefaction, a cheery-looking 155cm tall male Duduk with red eyes and a glowing aura, is one facet of the Divine Duduk Business. Temples to the DDB can be found in many cities, more commonly than temples strictly dedicated to any of its individual members. Benefaction is a common symbol invoked by charitable organisations, and Benefaction Day is a holy day associated with him, in which gifts are exchanged with friends, family, and strangers. He is associated with providing, protecting, and bestowing.

Statues of Benefaction commonly feature his extraordinarily large genitalia. He is a god of endowment and giving satisfaction, in just about any way you can think of. Fertility falls under his purview, of course, and those wishing for sexual prowess or to have children can touch the statues to receive a small blessing toward this. Statues in which his genitalia are covered up can provide a small blessing toward any efforts to do nice things for people. Statues of him that are sculpted to have genitalia simply absent are mildly blasphemous, and statues in which the genitalia were present but have been deliberately removed (either by design or vandalism) are more than mildly blasphemous, though he is not the type to punish blasphemers.

Enforcement is.

She is the largest and fiercest of his wives.

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Vutrikost

In appearance, it's a giant lanky creature with a hunched posture and glowing red eyes. Its body is pitch black and drips with acrid slime, and its teeth are crooked and needlelike. Its voice is a hiss, and its body creaks and cracks with every movement. Living things near it become warped and strange if they stay too long. Its temples usually reflect its nature, with not only distorted architecture, but also distorted plant and animal life in the immediate vicinity. Common symptoms include dramatic crookedness, elongation, blackening, and development of glowing reddish features. The effects may go away with time, if Vutrikost's influence leaves. Vutrikost is the most powerful known deity of curses. While certainly not the only source of curses, mortals and even other deities use Vutrikost when they need an exceptionally powerful one. Though it is extremely spiteful, and capable of cursing nearly all deities and objects, it is also under no obligation to provide its service to anyone for free. It does have a sense of humour, however, and on rare occasions, it has been known to cast curses purely for the enjoyment of the situation that the action would create. Not only does it apply curses itself, it can enable individuals to channel its power to deliver them at will, or create objects that can inflict them. Vutrikost is also a deity of retribution, and somewhat prone to whimsy, and so such objects are sometimes given to individuals it wants to see turn the tides of a conflict when it dislikes their aggressor. It is not known for being responsible with its abilities, but anyone who disagrees with its activities is either unwilling to confront it, or, quite predictably, gets cursed horribly when they try.

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Ekwi Irrepaumal

Ekwi is a 325-foot tall glowing golden Amtsvane, who took on a corporeal form that was originally an enchanted statue of the same size, crafted in his image. His prior incorporeal size is not known. In any case, the creators of the statue were not under his direction to construct it, nor were they Amtsvane themselves. The story goes that there was a civilisation of Bugfolk, who had an established history of giant golden glowing deities. A group of these Bugfolk, while out searching for new lands, saw a lone male Amtsvane with his tentacles out, and, believing him to have been a previously-unknown god, returned with wild exaggerations about his size, mistakes about his colouration, and an overabundance of speculation and misattributions about his nature. They immediately erected a statue in one of their resource-rich cities, imbuing it with powerful magic, and stirred the beliefs of their entire civilisation to include this latest addition to their pantheon. The result of whatever truly happened in those days is that today there is Ekwi Irrepaumal, a god who has brought the old civilisation up to be a large and prosperous nation, whose population now includes many species. He possesses the power to make soils rich, to summon gales to sink enemy fleets, and many other feats in the name of serving his people. However, they must serve him in turn, for he not only relies on them to make him powerful, he is also pompous and proud, and can easily crush most mortals. The poison of his fangs is even capable of felling lesser deities and causing others to fall ill, so he is not to be disrespected. Although his primary goal is to serve the nation of Neo-Kosor, he can be convinced to perform small divine feats for those he favours, wherever they may come from. However, anyone who seeks such boons must come to him in person, and must show the proper reverence. He is not as patient as a mortal Amtsvane.

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Kletad-Eknuis

The Silirw homeworld of Eknuis has an unusual world deity, whose name translates to “Protector-Eknuis,” or “A thing that protects Eknuis” for a less literal translation. Its range is restricted to that planet, however, as the Silirw are in some ways very strongly unified, its power is immense. Kletad-Eknuis is a deliberately-created egregore, which gains strength from the disturbingly coherent idea of what the Silirw think it should be. Silirw are individuals, but it seems their entire planet’s worth of people is of such a similar mind as to how this deity should be that it is the most powerful protective entity of its type discovered so far.

Kletad-Eknuis is a higher-dimensional figure of many angles. Its exact specifications are unknown, but it hardly matters, as the Silirw are capable of changing it at a whim. Ordinarily, altering an egregore, especially such an immense one, at a whim is no simple task, but as the entire population can potentially be mobilised at once, the only thing to slow it is the time it takes for them to be informed properly. Once the consensus is formed, the actual changes will be enacted within seconds.

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World Deities

Some deities originate from planets. This may be because they are egregores born from the minds of the inhabitants of the planet, former mortals who ascended to godhood through some process, entities generated by sorcerers and made powerful, or various other origins.

Whatever the case, they often have some attachment to the world they were made on, and will thus protect that world from threats that the mortal inhabitants cannot, such as relativistic weaponry. Typically, we find few battles among the pantheons of different planets, as they tend to be busy attending to the matters on their own planet.

Some deities, such as Dessen, Ereku-sama, Nilitoc, Quincy, and Sarfis, are not bound to a single planet, though they may be found only on a limited range. In some cases this is because local gods do not welcome them, but it may also be due to their own limitations.

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Nilitoc (part 3)

Nilitoc’s body seems to be incapable of receiving harm. It cannot be scratched, scorched, fractured, or otherwise damaged by any known means. It cannot be restrained, either, although it has not been seen outside of the summoning chambers of its temples, and has not been recorded even standing up from the seated position it appears in.

It will appear regardless of the intentions of those who summon it.Those attempting to attack it in earnest are typically exploded from the inside out shortly afterward. It will often appear if its summoning is performed incorrectly (such as if a person uses someone else’s blood to call it instead of their own), so that it can berate whoever is at fault.

Its surface is dark reddish and brown hues, with some areas of gold. The only orifice it appears to possess is a mouth. It has six eyes, with each pair a different size. It looks almost like a construct, and some theorize that it may be one. It has declined to offer any clarification on this.

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Midiol

Midiol is merely a powerful spirit, rather than a deity. They are a genderless, mostly-humanoid figure who radiates an aura of light, and whose features cannot be precisely described. Those mortals who have looked upon Midiol have been transfixed by their beauty, and in many cases have wept, yet none can describe just what they saw. Attempts to capture this spirit on camera have been thus far unsuccessful.

Midiol’s shimmering aura of multicoloured light is a separate phenomenon from their glamouring appearance. Mortals who approach and are bathed in the light are also bathed in pleasure, which grows the closer they are. Those who have directly touched Midiol have not survived. Interrogation of the souls of some of those victims has shown that they experience incredible pleasure for a brief time, and then die suddenly. Midiol does not capture their souls, but does not leave a body behind. What they do with the bodies remains a mystery.

This entity is to be considered extremely dangerous to mortals whose nature is not anti-magical. For ordinary mortals, remaining in the spirit’s presence increases the likelihood of being transfixed into immobility, and then being killed. Midiol tends to appear with minimal warning, and only in or at the edges of forests that are far from civilisation. They have been spotted on multiple planets, though it is unknown if they multilocate or how they travel.

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Dessen (part 2)

Dessen’s temples vary in style from world to world. Some are at the hearts of cities, and some are found in faraway places such as mountain caves that no civilisations have colonised. In some cases, they were constructed entirely by the deity itself, and in other cases, it enlisted the labour of willing volunteers.

If a site is particularly active, Dessen may manifest within the temple at all times, but if not, it may appear only when summoned or if the whim occurs to it, such as may happen in the case of unwitting trespassers.

Some business with this deity can be conducted within the temple, but for certain kinds, the deity may pull the other party into its body. This will bring them to a location that is not technically within the temple, in which space is not limited and privacy can be guaranteed. It is also said to be extremely comfortable.

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Sarfis (part 2)

The imps of Sarfis are dark purplish colours, typically only a few feet tall, with toothy grins, pointed ears, and tails. Though they look alive, they do not bleed or seem to feel pain, and spells which typically work only on living creatures do not work on them. They do, however, have a real physical presence.

They are capable of escaping any manner of bondage with their portals, and an individual imp will usually use them to escape if it is specifically bothered. For example, if one’s arm is severed, it may not appear to care, but it will often portal away afterward, severed arm included regardless of distance from the rest of the body.

Merely bothering the imps will not have any immediately obvious effect on Sarfis’ opinion of you, but it may eventually get annoyed and leave. Nothing harmful to the imps seems capable of passing through their portals, so attempts to damage Sarfis on a large scale have only resulted in the violent deaths of those behind the attempt.

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Nilitoc (part 2)

Nilitoc’s temples are most often found near cities. This is because typically, its powers are invoked for the good of a large group, rather than an individual. It is not encouraged to ask it for personal boons, but it can be done. A more encouraged thing to ask for would be freedom from famine and germs for one’s city, for some duration. It may refuse to grant requests if they are for a group that is not closely linked to the person asking.

Once summoned by blood, Nilitoc will make an agreement with whoever summoned it. They must agree to sacrifice their own blood, body parts, or their entire body (by way of their death, in the latter case), and afterward, the damage will be reversed, and they will be returned at least to the state in which they entered. If they initiated the ritual in a non-whole condition, then there is no penalty for asking to be made more whole, so long as a sufficient sacrifice is made. More painful sacrifices are worth more, but something material must be lost. It cannot be a payment in pain alone.

The sacrifice may be self-inflicted, or it may be inflicted by Nilitoc, whose claws and teeth are enormous and fearsome. If implements are not brought, they can be provided. Most of the time, ones which are provided will be gone when the ritual has ended. Asking for items themselves as an exchange for the sacrifice is permitted, but highly atypical. If you would like to summon Nilitoc, do not make a habit of requesting things that do not fall within its preferred scope.

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Quincy

Quincy is many things. He is the end of the universe. He is the personification of all things nonconsensual. Quincy is inside of everyone, to some extent. You can try to avoid Quincy’s manifestations, but what he represents will always be there. He looks different depending on who looks at him. To humans, he appears as a human, but to other species, he appears as a member of the respective species. To those without a true form, he appears as a cloud. His main colour is always bright magenta, with a bright lime green as a secondary colour, and he always appears to be wearing a Mitre. If you’re lucky, he will be wearing underwear. You will probably not see him wearing anything else.

Prolonged proximity to Quincy’s manifestations causes rage and the urge to fistfight. One sign that he is near is the smell of gingerbread. You may also hear him playing tambourines. You may see many of him, or just one. He can be any size, and he thrives on all kinds of discomfort. If you encounter him, you will probably be killed by him.

You cannot summon Quincy. His followers sometimes attempt it, even so, but by desiring it, they make it less likely. If he does appear, you may have a chance to make him turn his attention elsewhere and leave, by thinking happy thoughts. They bore him, and he is an intensely whimsical entity. Just don’t think about how much you don’t want him to be there.

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Dessen

Dessen has had many names and many forms. This name can be translated as “The Great Beast.” It was so called because of its vast size, monstrous features, and unquenchable desire to eat, especially living creatures.

When it was given this name, it was primarily summoned at dedicated temples, merely by having its presence desired by someone there. Unlike Nilitoc or Sarfis, it is very selective about who it grants boons to, and may not appear if it doesn’t like the person attempting to call upon it. It may even kill them, if it dislikes them strongly enough. It may also appear unbidden, for various reasons.

Unlike with Nilitoc, if you are under Dessen’s protection, it may personally manifest to protect you. Unlike both Nilitoc and Sarfis, it may even manifest just to hang out with you, if camaraderie has been established. It tends to be much more hands-on in its approach than the other entities so far discussed. Or, tentacles-on, as it were.

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Sarfis, or Sarfis’ Imps

Sarfis is a hive mind, whose bodies are small, dark, implike creatures. It has no temples, but can be summoned by anyone with a physical body, with the proper rituals.

The imps arrive through portals around whoever calls them, with seething masses of their bodies visible behind the ones that crawl out. No one knows their number, nor where they come from. Being one entity, they speak in unison or in sequence, depending on unknown factors.

They offer musical skill, enhanced strength, or all manner of other boons to whoever can pay their price. This relates to the requirement of the summoner to have a physical body - invariably, the price is one or more body parts. The summoner may take or leave the deal once they learn what price Sarfis has chosen. If they take it, their gift will be granted immediately.

Sarfis will extract the price whenever they decide to. It may be days, or even years. If the person does not have that part anymore at the time of collection... well. It ends badly for that person. If they DO have it, the imps will take it, and the removal will be clean and precise, with no bleeding afterward.

The price may consist of, as an example, two left hands, when the person only has one. In cases like this, Sarfis will clarify - they will only collect one, when they come for payment. However, should the person’s left hand be regenerated afterward, whether by natural limb regrowth, magical healing, etc., they will come again to take the second. If the price was only two, then a third would not be taken. Importantly, the person will not be penalized if they never get their hand back after the first time.