Chandrasekhar said:
Just a question here regarding Dagda, Arawn, and Sucellus. It states in the religion thread that Dagda had control over the domains of life and death before Sucellus was reborn and took control of the life domain. Is there some additional backstory regarding Arawn's current control of the death domain?
Life and Death were originally the same power. In the Age of Dragons Arawn was responsible to tending to souls, those entering creation and those leaving. Is was a relativly low number.
In the Age of Magic man gained the ability to use magic. Their mastery over Life magic allowed them to create life. These were the mages that made Chimeras, Manticores, Trolls, Griffons, Minotaurs, etc. The gods were upset that mortals were doing things that they thought only they should do. So Arawn stepped in and withdrew Life magic from men. Ressurection and the creation of new species became impossible.
The gods dont have enough control over their spheres to be able to turn stuff like this on and off. They are the conduits. To make this change Arawn had to withdrawal completly from creation, his power in its entierty wouldn't effect it. Their were gates created to allow souls to travel between Arawn's realm (the netherworld) and creation but outside of that Arawn doesn't have any effect on Creation.
At the end of the Age of Magic millions were killed. The soul gates were flooded and the netherworld became full of dead spirits. After Sucellus was killed he found himself in the Netherworld as well, where he helped Arawn deal with the influx of new spirits.
When Mulcarn was killed and Sucellus's body was brought back together. Sucellus appealed to Arawn to be able to be ressurected. He needed the power of life back into creation to do it. Sucellus also argued that the world would need the power of life to recover from Mulcarn's reign. Arawn (always the most dour of gods) refused to enter Creation, so instead of doing that he granted dominion of the life sphere to Sucellus.
Sucellus was reborn and the ability use life magic was returned to mankind.
Other incidentals in the story:
During the signing of the compact one of Arawns top angels rebeled and kept fighting the war. He was angered to see his former master withdrawal completly from creation and even more angry to see him hand over half of his dominion to the former god of dandelions ("Whose only major military achievement was failing at a task that a flesh puppet later accomplished"). That angel is Basium.
The ability to use death magic was also taken from men when Arawn withdrew. The things mankind with doing with necromancy were more preverse than the experiements of the life mages. But the power of death magic returned to the world when the brothers stole the gems of air, water and death and took them back into creation. Tuoni (the brother that kept the Gem of Death, the "Opalus Mortis") has the gem embeded in his right hand and it is the source of all necromancy in creation.